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A* * * V 8 * 




SHORT STORIES IN THE 
MAKING 



A WRITERS' AND STUDENTS' INTRODUCTION 
TO THE TECHNIQUE AND PRACTICAL COM- 
POSITION OF SHORT STORIES, INCLUDING 
AN ADAPTATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF 
THE STAGE PLOT TO SHORT STORY WRITING 



BY 

ROBERT WILSON NEAL, A.M. 



NEW YORK 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 West 32nd Street 

LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY 
HUMPHREY MILFORD 

1914 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 










Copyright, 1914 

by Oxford University Press 

american branch 



JUN 261920 
©CU570458 



*W6 I 






To 
My Wife 



FOREWORD 

What is wanting in this book, critics, teachers, and 
students will all too readily discover without my help. Let 
me rather point out, then, what it is meant to do. 

First. It deals with short stories (contes) in the mak- 
ing. Therefore it is intended for the writer. And be- 
cause many of the readers most interested in such a book 
are beginners, it is intended in large part for the in- 
experienced. Yet it is intended for the advanced under- 
taker of story-telling too ; for no one can stake the border 
between elementary theory and expert application of it, 
and even the experienced writer may find surety and 
improved method in a study of technique. Yet the book 
is for the non-writer also — for him who wishes in compact 
form a reasonably complete and concrete explanation of the 
short story and its nature. 

Second. The book does not profess to be scholarly — 
certainly not to be scholarly in the academic sense. It has 
avoided the historical entirely ; it attempts no comparative 
studies in development and types, no evaluating estimates ; 
it is not a research volume, and the reader will seek through 
it from end to end without finding a single formal citation 
of authorities, the proof that the writer knows the conven- 
tional doctrine, dares not depart from it, and is ready with 
marshaled knowledge to protect himself from any who 
may accuse him of betraying the gentle trusting reader by 
novelty or new departure. Not that this book can pretend 
to either of these. At most (and even this it does not 

vii 



viii Fobeword 

profess), it adds a trifle of discussion at a place or two. 
But it does undertake to make its own approach and use 
its own plan in summarizing what is our present knowl- 
edge of the theory and technique of the short story. 

Third. The book is written, not from the critic's hut 
from the practicing author's viewpoint — from the stand- 
ing-ground and outlook of the man to whom the abstract 
theory, although interesting and valuable, is less interesting 
and valuable than the concrete management and application 
of it. It is written to meet the needs of the man who, for 
practical and utilitarian reasons no less than from ab- 
stract intellectual interest, desires to know the what, the 
how, and the why of the short story. I have written good, 
bad, and indifferent short stories, and hope to keep on 
writing; and this interest in the mechanics, the artisanry 
and art, the technique of the work, has caused me to treat 
the subject from the viewpoint of the active worker rather 
than from that of the esthetic theorist or the literary 
investigator. Throughout, I have been concerned to learn 
the governing rule, and then to state it in such form that 
my statement may make it available to other practitioners, 
especially to apprentice workers striving to extend their 
workman's knowledge and develop their artisan skill. 
(The author expects to publish soon a companion volume, 
To-day's Short Stories Analyzed, in which the practice 
of modern writers of short stories will be fully illustrated 
and exemplified.) 

Fourth. Most of the principles stated are drawn as 
much from reading and observation of the ordinary mill 
run of short fiction, in book collections and in magazines, 
for the last twenty years, as they are from the recognized 
authorities on short story writing. He who reads and runs 



Foreword ix 

away sometimes carries with him well-defined ideas that 
are usable another day ; and I have felt that such readers' 
observations and conclusions are as valuable in checking 
up the statements of the authorities, as the statements of 
the authorities are in checking up one's own observations 
and conclusions. I owe (as any one can see from this 
book) a great debt to some of these authorities — especially 
to Pitkin, Albright, and Esenwein, if I must discriminate 
— and I here acknowledge it, with gratitude. But even so 
I have endeavored to remain independent in reaching and 
stating my conclusions ; and in this I have been frequently 
aided by personal experience of success or failure in 
handling problems of like sort in my own writing. 

Fifth. The book attempts to define terms with especial 
precision ; with tedious over-precision, some may think. It 
tries, too, not to employ the same term with two meanings 
in any position where confusion may result. Probably 
it fails sometimes in this attempt to avoid ambiguity and 
confusion; but on the whole I trust that it succeeds 
enough to lessen for its readers the difficulties of this sort 
that occasionally I have met in my own reference to 
treatises upon fiction. 

Sixth. Plot being indispensable to the true short 
story, or conte, and the short story being in effect a narra- 
tive drama, the book undertakes to re-present the familiar 
theory of the stage play, but to present it adapted and 
applied to the nature and needs of the short story. This 
fact calls for mention only because so outright an applica- 
tion of formal stage plot theory to short story narration 
has not been made elsewhere — not, at least, in English. 
A satisfactory treatment of the theory of the specialized 
short story (conte) plot has yet to be produced ; but lacking 



x Foreword 

it, the student will find in a re-statement of the theory of 
stage plot like that given in this book, a helpful presenta- 
tion of essential principles. . . . 

Need of a specialized term by which to indicate the 
specialized form of short fiction sometimes awkwardly 
called the true short story, has long been felt. ^Professor 
Canby's suggestion of the term conte has not been bettered ; 
and as without undue violence to historical descent or to 
strict meanings conte can be applied to this particular 
type of short prose fiction, I have ventured to employ it 
interchangeably with the term " short story," in order 
that students using this book may at least become familiar 
with this possible synonym. 

Those who complain of the fullness and, possibly, re- 
dundancy of the treatment given very simple matters, I 
would ask to remember that the book is largely for begin- 
ners in short story writing and readers of ordinary educa- 
tion seeking instruction or an increase in literary under- 
standing and appreciation, who can find these things 
in study of short story principles. Those who mislike 
the occasional discussion of remote or special problems, 
will please remind themselves that I am writing for 
persons also who have more than a tyro's interest in the 
technicalities of the subject. Those who blame me for 
omitting an explanation of narration itself, are referred 
to the numerous excellent treatises already in print upon 
the general principles of narrative writing, with the sug- 
gestion that even in writing about the short story, one 
must begin somewhere, assuming some preparation at 
least for study of the special type. And those who wonder 
why matters so important to literary art as style and 



Foreword xi 

esthetic qualities are not discussed, are told — in the strict- 
est confidence, please — that style and literary art are quite 
another story. 

A last word — to those who scoff at " attempts to manu- 
facture writers." This book is written to guide and help 
persons who wish to write short stories. But it is not 
written with the belief that short story writing, or any 
other form of literary composition, can be taught. It 
cannot. Literature is art, and art is incommunicable. 
Theories of its methods and success can be inferred and 
explained; its practical technique can frequently be ex- 
plained and acquired. But neither theory nor technique 
makes art; the living spirit is not in them. Moreover, 
many a person who aspires to write lacks ability to achieve 
even technique. Books such as this are not written with 
any other belief. They can aid intellectual expansion; 
they can enable the competent to acquire technique; but 
more than this they cannot do unless the student bring to 
them an equipment of capacity, ability, and natural gift 
approaching talent or genius. Technique can produce 
well conceived, well planned, well constructed, and often 
salable stories, but it cannot produce living literature. 
Let no prospective student think otherwise. 

Eobert W. JSTeal. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I. Theory of the Short Story Type (Conte) . 1 

I. Fiction Aims at the Interpretation of Life and the Di- 

version of the Reader, by Means of Concrete 
Presentation. 

II. The Short Story, or Conte, Is a Type in Itself. 

III. The Short Story, or Conte, is a Drama in Narrative. 

IV. The Plot of the Short Story, or Conte, Must Be 

Dramatic. 

V. The Short Story Requires Persons in Action in a Time 

of Crisis. 

VI. Singleness of Effect Is Necessary to the Short Story. 

VII. The Short Story, or Conte, May Aim at Different 

Kinds of Effect. 

VIII. Some Short Stories, or Contes, Emphasize Theme. 

IX. Some Short Stories Emphasize Plot. 

X. Some "Short Stories Emphasize Character. 

XI. Some Short Stories (Contes) Emphasize Atmosphere. 

CHAPTER II. Theory and Practice of the Plot . .71 

XII. The Short Story Plot Much Resembles That of the 

One-Act Play. 

XIII. The Exposition Is the Introducing Part of the Plot. 

XIV. The Exciting Moment, or Inciting Impulse, Begins 

the Development. 

XV. The Rising Action Develops the Plot to Its Decisive 

Moment. 

XVI. The- Falling Action Brings the Outcome and Close. 

CHAPTER III. The Compositional Construction -of the 

Short Story 122 

XVII. The Opening Seizes Interest, Introduces Action, 

Strikes the Keynote, and (Perhaps) Conveys 
Exposition. 

XVIII. The Purposes of the Opening Can Be Served by 

Various Kinds of Beginning. 

xiii 



xiv Table of Contents 

XIX. In the Body of the Story, the Chief Constructional 

Problem Is That of Sequence. 

XX. The Ending, if Separate from the Climactic Moment, 

Exists Merely to Supplement and Close the 
Narrative. 

XXI. A Preliminary Scheme of Important Compositional 

Facts Will Help the Author. 



PAGE 



CHAPTER IV. Other Problems of Fiction-Writing . 

XXII. Observance of Certain " Unities " Prevents Dis- 

persal of Effect. 

XXIII. Decision upon Plot and Selection of Developing 

Material Must Be Determined by the Author's 
Detailed Familiarity with the Facts Involved. 

XXIV. Characterization Involves the Presenting of 

Human Traits, Class Attributes, and Personal 
Traits and Mannerisms. 

XXV. " Character " Implies an Original Conception of a 

Person Having Definite Individuality; Its 
Traits Being Portrayed by Description, An- 
alysis, Psychological Narration, and Especially 
Act and Speech. 

XXVI. Dialogue Lightens the Narrative, Contributes to 

Exposition and Intensification, Furthers Ac- 
tion, and Characterizes. 

XXVII. The Main Practical Problems of Dialogue Are, 

How to Make Sure of Essential Truthfulness 
and Produce Verisimilitude. 



178 



AFTERWORD. The Question Answered . 



249 



CHAPTEE I 

THEOEY OF THE SHOET STOEY TYPE, OE 

COETE 

I. Fiction Aims at the Interpretation of Life and 
the Diversion of the Eeader, by Means of Con- 
crete Presentation 

1. When we ask, what is the purpose of fiction? we 
find that a complete answer must include two assertions. 
True, in many discussions concerning fiction, its structure, 
its methods, and the like, sometimes one of these asser- 
tions, sometimes the other, is disregarded. But a complete 
understanding — one that is philosophically sound — never- 
theless cannot be had without including both in the 
answer. 

2. These two purposes of fiction when fiction is typical 
and at its best, are: 

A. To interpret human life, and 

B. To interest (amuse, divert, entertain) the reader. 
" Interpret " must here be understood to mean, produce in 
the reader a clearer understanding of or a sense of having 
experienced human life. But much good fiction is pro- 
duced in which emphasis is laid mainly and even solely 
on entertainment. This does not, however, mean that 
such fiction is without interpretive value. 

3. We must understand, however, that this interpretive 
aim is not an immediate, but rather an ultimate and sub- 



2 Short Stories in the Making 

conscious aim. The author is, at the moment of writing, 
not engaged expressly in producing an interpretation, but 
in giving a clear account of certain persons and acts as he 
sees them. Yet as a serious man, given to observing and 
pondering life, he feels himself responsible for a sincere, 
accurate report. Such an author would not be satisfied 
with his work unless, under all its artistry, wit, humor, 
incident, plot, and amusement, there were to be found a 
definite view of existence; and though he may not aim first 
of all directly at interpreting humanity, yet — in the end 
— this often is his great purpose. 

4. With the best writers, this need of showing forth 
mankind " as in itself it truly is," constitutes the great 
and often the all-sufficient compulsion to writing. His 
very nature compels the true fiction-writer to interpret 
life. Nevertheless, much diverting or merely entertaining 
fiction is written in which the emphasis is laid on the 
amusement, not on the interpretation. But with the 
steady advancement made by the reading public in the 
appreciation of technique and the power to comprehend 
human motives, even the writer who aims only to amuse 
must in our day base his tale upon conceptions that are 
true to the world as clear-sighted men know it to be. The 
best fiction of its very nature does and must have both 
these aims. Interest and interpretation are so combined 
by the best art that no one but persons of limited mentality 
or education can fail to profit from and appreciate each 
of the twain. 

5. Fiction, we have said, must interpret life. But to 
interpret life, it must first present life. Frequently — in- 
deed, more frequently than many authors realize — this is 
all it needs to do to interpret life. A true, vivid, stirring 



Theory op the Shout Story Type B 

presentation is enough to compel us to sense, think about, 
and understand more fully this human world. Seeking 
the shortest expression of the purpose of fiction, we there- 
fore may say that fiction aims to present life. Now let us 
see how fiction may, effect this presentation. 

6. To present life, fiction must embody some truth or 
truths of human life; for only truths, only abstract con- 
clusions, more or less completely perceived and appreci- 
ated, make up what we call our understanding of life. 
But in dealing with these truths, fiction does not much 
discuss them, expound them, or argue about them. Neither 
does it seek to deal with them as abstract truths at all. 
On the contrary, it seeks to avoid, not only the abstract 
form of the truth, but also the explanatory methods essen- 
tial in dealing with truths as abstract thoughts. It prefers 
instead to show forth concrete facts in concrete forms, 
j letting the abstract truth that underlies these facts be 
expressed in the facts themselves. That is, fiction seeks 
as its final result to embody, or body forth, some truth 
i or truths of human life, but seeks to bring about this re- 
i suit in a particular way; namely, by embodying, or bodying 
forth, in concrete form specific and concrete facts wherein 
I the truths of life are exemplified. We must, however, note 
iithis: Fiction does not necessarily begin its presentation 
3 with these truths in mind; that they are found in the 
work of the good artist, he could not help if he would, 
Plor they are embodied there as a result of that process of 
concrete presentation which fiction must employ. Fiction 
has, as its immediate purpose, to body forth, not truths, 
but concrete facts, of human life. 

7. What "concrete" means a few illustrations will 
show. Anger is one of the facts of human life—an 



4 Short Stories in the Making 

unpleasant truth in our existence. Yet no one ever saw, 
tasted, smelt, touched, or heard anger ; he merely has seen 
and heard manifestations of it. Anger as we know it is 
an abstraction. But a scowl, a blow, a curse — these are 
concrete things that manifest anger. Again, charity does 
not take on a concrete form until some individual act of 
charity is done — a shilling passed to a ragged beggar, or 
a wearied laborer given a lift in our automobile. Such 
acts are concrete manifestations of a thing which is merely 
an idea bearing the name " charity." 

8. So is the great engine in the ship's depths a concrete 
embodiment of power, as is likewise the stroke of a 
hammer that drives in a nail. Affectionate devotion is 
concretely embodied in the acts of Mr. Peggotty, wander- 
ing throughout southern Europe in search of his wayward 
Little Em'ly. It is embodied equally as much in a wife's 
act when she writes a letter of forgiveness to the husband 
who has wronged her. 

9. In short, by " concrete " we here mean an individual 
instance; for in such an instance, we can always discover 
bodied forth, or manifested, a truth of human nature and 
life. Moreover (although this fact is not necessary to our 
essential understanding of the term), the concrete mani- 
festation always comes to us embodied in acts or facts that 
in part at least we can perceive by means of our physical 
senses. Only, in fiction we are not in the presence of the 
actual fact ; the fact is presented to us, not in actuality, but 
in an imagined form, by means of words. 

10. This presence of imagined instead of actual fact is 
vital to fiction ; for the very term " fiction " carries the 
idea of things made up by the mind. Fiction deals, not 
with pure fact, which is only something actual, but with 



Theory of the Short Story Type 5 

imagined fact conceived to embody truth; and truth, 
though not actual, is something better than actual — that 
is, real. Actual fact can — let us realize it now — be less 
true than fiction. A few years ago, a community near 
!New York was shocked by the act of a father who burned 
his children's tender hands with match names as a means 
of " teaching " them. The report was true ; he did just 
that. But what he did was terribly untrue to human life. 
The truth of human life is, that most parents love their 
children and undergo suffering and death to save the 
little ones. This is a reality of parental nature, a truth of 
life, not a mere fact, which may be quite untrue to life. 
The less effective forms of fiction are those that come closer 
to actual fact; they present truths which are of a less 
general nature, and hence are more nearly like actual facts 
and less like universal principles. Melodrama, for illus- 
tration, imagines what might happen sometimes, but is 
unlike the general course of life ; it deals with the excep- 
tional fact, not the general truth. 

11. We can now sum up in a final statement the aim 
of fiction. Fiction deals with the truths of human life; 
it aims to present these truths embodied in concrete forms, 
or instances; and it deals with imagined facts, not with 
the actual. We say therefore that the aim of fiction is, to 
present some truth or truths of human life manifested con- 
cretely in a body of imagined fact. 

12. Before we close this section, however, a few words 
will be worth while about imagination. Imagination is 
the power or operation of the mind that builds up new 
conceptions, ideas, or pictures out of those already in its 
possession — that is, out of experience. Experience is made 
up of all the knowledge — physical, mental, moral, spiritual 



6 Short Stories in the Making 

— that has come to us in any way, by any means, at any 
time, 

13. There are three degrees of imagination. The most 
ordinary imagination is that which merely reproduces in 
its possessor's mind a body of imagined fact entirely simi- 
lar to the actual fact from which the imagination has 
drawn its originals. It does little more than reproduce in 
the mind incidents and scenes already experienced. Evi- 
dently this degree of imagination (if imagination indeed 
it be) is not much better than good memory. It is re- 
productive imagination, or imaginative memory. 

14. The second degree of imagination does more than 
merely reproduce a sort of combined memory-picture of 
past experiences. Drawing on memory — as all imagina- 
tion must — it nevertheless selects, rejects, recombines, and 
remodels until the body of facts that it produces is a new 
one. From past experiences, it rebuilds a new structure, 
using the old materials as a skilled builder might, who, 
selecting choice materials from many old buildings, put 
up a new edifice perhaps surpassing any of the old. This 
selective and constructive degree of imagination we term 
constructive imagination. 

15. Yet, superior as constructive imagination is to 
mere imaginative memory, it is nevertheless inferior to 
imagination of the third degree. Imagination of the third 
degree works as does constructive imagination, and it uses 
past experience. But it has a greater power than has con- 
structive imagination — a power resulting from deeper in- 
sight, stronger sympathies, more catholic taste, keener and 
wider observation, stronger intelligence, stronger emotions, 
and whatever else contributes to artistic genius. Hence 
its material is not old material reworked, but rather new 



Theory of the Short Story Type 7 

material, originally discovered and got out by the writer 
through his deeper insight and understanding, and handled 
in a way original with and possible to him alone. 

16. The consequence is,, that what it produces is not 
merely something put together, but something created — 
something we are likely to call real, with the feeling that it 
springs direct from nature — something convincing, true- 
seeming, alive, capable of making one feel it as if it were an 
actual, a primal fact, not merely an output of the mind. 
Such products of the imagination of genius are creations, 1 
not constructions. This highest degree or poiver of imagi- 
nation we call creative imagination; and when it bodies 
forth a series of fact for us, we feel as if we stood in the 
presence of the truth of human life itself. 

17. But no matter what be the degree of imagination 
possessed by the fiction-writer, the object of fiction is al- 
ways the same: to body forth concretely in imagined fact 
some truth or truths of human life. This does not mean 
that fiction ought always to be heavy or even serious. Few 
things could be worse for the beginner than to think so. 
Indeed, the quality of the writer's imagination will, 
if high, make his treatment even of trivial themes creative 
(consider many fairy stories) ; and on the other hand, a 
lack of creative power will result in dead writing, no mat- 
ter how serious and high the theme. While realizing, 
therefore, that fiction aims to body forth some truth of 
human life, the young writer should at the same time 
realize that this aim will be attained by him only after he 
has mastered the art and methods of fiction. Nor will it 

1 Dickens created Sam Weller ; Thackeray created Becky Sharp and 
Colonel Newcome; Shakspere created the scenes of Ophelia's madness 
and Lear's passion; Mark Twain created Tom Sawyer. 



8 Short Stoeies in the Making 

be attained even then unless he knows also the human 
heart and human life. He will best serve his ambition by 
developing his intellectual and spiritual gifts, by studying 
men and man, and by mastering his craft — by learning to 
see facts, to understand people, and to tell a story well. 

II. The Shoet Stoey, oe Conte, is a Type in Itself 

1. By " short story " we do not nowadays mean any 
short piece of narrative fiction. The term has come to 
mean a particular kind of writing, having its own charac- 
teristics. Loosely, we speak of all the shorter pieces of 
fiction appearing in the magazines or in books as short 
stories. But in fact a large number of such writings be- 
long to some other class. They may be character sketches, 
tales, scenarios or outlines, novelets, anecdotes, episodes, 
incidents, or what not; but many of them are in no strict 
sense contes. 

2. All these types of fiction are closely related in some 
way to the short story (conte) ; but they are not identical 
with it. They are worth writing ; they call for skill ; they 
have their own place in fiction ; practice in them aids one 
in writing the conte. But they lack, one and all, some- 
thing that the conte has, and consequently some of them 
are, and any of them may be, inferior to it both in final 
effectiveness and in artistic quality. The conte — although 
perhaps it can never, being short, be absolutely as great 
as a great novel — at its best is at the present time the 
most finished, artistic, and closely wrought form of narra- 
tive fiction. It manifests a higher art and perfection of 
technique than the novel has attained, and it equals the 
best drama in constructional excellence. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 9 

3. Although the student cannot, before he has mastered 
the definition of the short story given in section III, com- 
pletely grasp the differences between this form and other 
types, these differences are here enumerated. They should 
be reviewed and studied by the student after he has learned 
what the conte is. 

(a) Character or other sketch. — Lacks dramatic plot; 
lacks dramatic action; may be descriptive, not narrative. 
When having dramatic plot and dramatic action, thor- 
oughly unified to produce a single predominant effect, it 
becomes a eonte. 

(b) Tale. — Lacks dramatic plot; may lack dramatic 
action; may leave the reader with several distinct and 
equally strong impressions, instead of the one impression 
that is the final result of the short story. Like the charac- 
ter sketch, passes over into the conte if given dramatic 
plot and action producing a single predominant impres- 
sion. 

(c) Scenario or outline. — The scenario is merely a 
skeletonized outline of the action, plot, scenery, etc., of a 
play, a story, or a moving picture film. It gives the sub- 
stance merely, not the effect, and it may be concerned 
with any form of drama or narrative. Further, it may 
be so condensed that it is nothing more than a catalogue of 
essential personages, action, setting, and " business." 
(When it outlines merely plot and action, it is technically 
known as action-plot rather than as scenario.) 

(d) Novelet. — Merely a short novel; subject to the 
same looseness of structure, content, method, and treatment 
as the novel may and frequently does show (no similar 
looseness is permissible in the conte) . 

(e) Anecdote, episode, incident. — Usually very brief, 



10 Short Stories in the Making 

and therefore do not permit development of dramatic plot ; 
often involve no more than a single isolated act or speech ; 
do not necessarily aim at single effect, although on account 
of their brevity they frequently produce it ; and frequently 
do not aim at dramatic effect. 

(f) Allegory, fable. — From the narrative viewpoint 
the fable is little more than an anecdote, episode, or inci- 
dent, except that it frequently makes not men, but beasts, 
its persons. Allegory is a method of symbolic presentation, 
not a type of narrative. Therefore it should not be com- 
pared with or contrasted to the conte. The conte may be 
allegorical ; an allegory may be given the form of a conte. 

III. The Conte is a Drama in Narrative 

1. The short story is a drama in narrative form. 
" Drama " is here used in a strict sense to mean a play, 
the plot of which is closely wrought. By " plot " we 
commonly mean a series of acts, events, or incidents that 
runs through a play or a story, giving it framework and 
carrying it on to its end. Plots may be loose, or they may 
be close-wrought; and the close- wrought plot may further 
be dramatic. 

2. The loose plot is nothing more than a chance succes- 
sion of incidents, without necessary relation to one another 
or to the outcome of the story. If I say, " I have had a 
day of disappointments," and outline it thus: Burned 
toast at breakfast ; missed my usual train to the city ; lost 
a good customer; crushed my straw hat against a low 
beam; and found I had no cigars at home for an after- 
supper smoke — I outline a loose plot. The series of inci- 
dents is wholly chance and accidental. Moreover, there is 



Theory of the Short Story Type 11 

no final, climactic act or situation to which all these prece- 
dent incidents have led up and which they make the natural 
or inevitable outcome. 

3. !N~ow let us turn this loose plot into a more closely- 
wrought plot; we accomplish this by introducing the re- 
lations of cause and effect. "Waiting for new toast at 
breakfast causes me to miss my train; missing my train, 
I reach my office so late that my customer, disgusted, has 
gone, leaving word that he withdraws his trade; this 
worries me all day, and so takes up my mind on the way 
home that I do not notice the beam against which I smash 
my hat ; and stopping to get a new hat causes me to forget 
to buy cigars to take home; hence after supper I miss my 
accustomed smoke. 

4. Evidently our plot has become more close-wrought, 
because each incident in the series leads up to and is the 
cause of the next. But even yet these incidents do not 
interweave and interlock ; they merely follow each other as 
single causes and effects, not as an interacting body of 
cause and effect. Moreover, the story is still without a 
climax ; it is a succession, but not a progression and ascent 
to a conclusive outcome. If the plot is to be close-wrought 
to the full, something must happen at the end that is more 
important and more impressive than anything that has 
gone before (or at least fully as impressive and important) , 
and this something must be the direct and combined out- 
come of all the incidents together that have gone before, 
not merely the last event of a string of events, each of 
which is merely the cause of the next one in the chain. 

5. Let us therefore make our plot still more close- 
wrought, and thus bring about this final achievement of 
artistic plotting. We will start again. Let us assume 



12 Short Stories in the Making 

that we mean to show through our story how ordinary, 
everyday events may create a tragic situation. The final 
event, or scene, will be the combined result of all the 
others taken together, and will be that in which the tragic 
situation is completely revealed. 

6. Now for simplicity we will omit the incident of the 
cigars; and to prepare for the final situation, we will as- 
sume at the outset that I have been guilty of a murder, 
but have escaped capture and established myself prosper- 
ously in a respected business in this distant city. I am 
an irritable, quick-tempered man. The burned toast, the 
missed train, and the lost customer gradually rouse my 
anger. It is on the point of boiling over already; and 
when I strike the beam and crush my hat, it gets beyond 
control. I break into profanity. When a policeman 
cautions me, I swear at him. He arrests me. I am taken 
to the station — and recognized. As I am led away to 
prison, I realize that I am going to the scaffold. 

7. Step by step our plot has led forward, simply and 
naturally, to a point of crisis when, standing in the police 
station, I am recognized and realize my ruin. Incident has 
interlocked with incident, my character has affected my 
acts and my acts have reacted on events, until all together 
have produced a culminating situation that suddenly is 
perceived to be tragic. Not only do the incidents consti- 
tute a progression; they constitute an interwoven body of 
influences so closely related, every one with the others, that 
each is felt to have a part in the final outcome — to be a 
part of the total motivation and result. Here manifestly 
we have a plot that can fairly be called close-wrought. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 13 

I 

IV. The Plot of the Conte Must be Dramatic 

1. Now we come to the plot which is dramatic. A dra- 
matic plot is always a close- wrought plot ; it can never be 
(in the strictest sense) a loose plot. But it not only is a 
close-wrought plot ; it also is a close-wrought 'plot that de- 
pends upon and grows out of the traits of character of the 
persons involved in it, and in turn produces some after- 
effect in or upon these persons. What this means, a few 
illustrations may make clear. 

2. Assume yet again that the appearance of burned 
toast is an incident of the plot. In dramatic plot, this in- 
cident must in some way grow out of something in my own 
character, and must also in some manifest way affect me or 
my future — either establish my course in life more firmly, 
or change it, or confirm or alter my character, or leave me 
in some pleasant or unpleasant situation, or influence my 
fortunes for good or ill — in short, in some way make itself 
felt as a determining element in my existence. 2 

3. Now, how may the incident of the burned toast grow 
out of some trait of character in me ? Suppose me to be 
a domineering sort. of man, given to enforcing services 
from others regardless of circumstances. It is my way 
to demand help of the cook without considering her con- 
venience ; and I have shouted to her this morning for shav- 
ing water, then for clean towels, then for the shoe-brush. 
Knowing my disposition, she has hurried to wait on me, 
leaving the breakfast to its fate. Hence the charred toast. 

2 The student is cautioned that this influence need not be felt in 
a serious direction. It may result in nothing more than making 
me ridiculous for the moment. Thus, in a humorous story, the 
mock-hero is made laughable. 



14 Short Stories in the Making 

The burning of the toast is therefore the result in fact of 
this imperious element in my character; 3 and to this ex- 
tent the incident may be regarded as constituting part of a 
dramatic plot. 

4. But the incident must not only spring from some ele- 
ment of character in me; it also must have some effect upon 
me, my character, or my after life. Again let us assume 
that I am ill-tempered. We will also assume that my wife 
and I have quarreled frequently, the consequence being 
that we are almost at the point of separation. The black- 
ened toast stirs my black temper; I fling some insult at 
her ; and because of it she refuses longer to live with me. 
Plainly my future will be different as a result of this in- 
cident. It may indeed be different in various ways or to 
various degrees. My wife may have been my good angel, 
and lacking her influence, I go to the dogs (character de- 
velopment). Or it may be that, deeply loving my wife, I 
am horrified at my own behavior, and thereafter live a 
different life, conquering my temper and transforming my 
ill disposition (another instance of character development). 
Or again (a weaker outcome), my wife may have been 
my banker ; so that withdrawal of her money deprives me 
of the capital necessary to carry through my industrial 
plans, and I go to pieces upon financial reefs. 

5. If in any manner the incidents, growing out of some 
trait of character in me or in other persons of the story, 
thus affect me or the other persons, our future life or char- 
acter, they make the plot which they constitute a dramatic 
plot — one in which character shapes event and incident, 

* Let the student observe that, by shifting the character emphasis, 
he can make the burning of the toast result from the weak or 
subservient character of the cook. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 15 

and event and incident react on 'person, character, or 
life, 

6. What we have just been considering is known tech- 
nically as motivation — making every act or result spring 
from a clearly perceivable and adequate cause in the nature 
of the person and the situation, and making every cause 
produce a logical consequence affecting the person, char- 
acter, or situation. A dramatic plot, therefore, may be 
described as one that is adequately motivated throughout — 
it being always understood that character enters into mo- 
tive. We must not suppose, however, that the incidents or 
outcome of a dramatic plot must always be serious. Both 
may, on the contrary, be light, even within bounds frivo- 
lous ; and a plot can be farcical and burlesque, yet observe 
this principle of dramatic motiving, or motivation. 

V. The Short Story Kequires Persons in Action 
in a Time of Crisis 

1. Our understanding of the essential nature of the 
conte may be made clearer by stating the requirements of 
this form of fiction anew. The essence of the short story 
is this : persons in conclusive action, each according to his 
own character, in a time of crisis. To understand this 
crisis, we must perceive that it has grown out of incidents 
which these persons, each according to his own character, 
have helped to make, and that it will inevitably affect the 
present or the future of one or more of these same per- 
sons. 4 

4 Stories occasionally appear in which the dominant character 
is that of some one not introduced at all as a person acting in 
the story. For practical purposes, however, we may regard this 
person as one of the persons of the story. 



16 Short Stokies m the Making 

2. For the moment, let us regard the idea of crisis as 
most important in this description, or definition. By this 
time we must have realized that, rightly understood plot 
before everything else is the essential element of the short 
story (conte). The consequence of this importance is, that 
the construction of the plot demands exceedingly careful 
procedure. Our plot must not only be close-wrought, it 
must be close-wrought according to the strict dramatic re- 
quirements of motivation; and we are now to see further, 
that this dramatic plot must virtually consist, not so much 
of a long series of incidents terminating in a climactic 
scene, incident, or situation, as of this climactic scene, inci- 
dent, or situation itself, with the preliminary incidents and 
complications of which it is the culmination, subordinated 
to it, or even suppressed when suppression be possible with- 
out rendering the climactic situation obscure or lessening 
the total impressiveness of the story. For the conte is 
written to show forth character in conclusive action at some 
moment or in some period of crisis. 

3. Hence the plot of the conte always tends to cover: 

(a) So much preliminary incident as — and no more 
than — may be necessary to make clear the essential aspects 
of the crisis with which it deals; and then — 

(b) The situation, incident, character-play, or action 
that creates and constitutes the crisis. This situation, in- 
cident, character-play, or action it develops particularly, 
carrying it through a climax 5 to its logical conclusion. 6 

" See Sec. XV., on the Rising Action stage of the plot, and especially 
the paragraphs concerning decisive moment and climactic moment. 

8 The conclusion must be merely logical; it need not be (as some 
say it must) inevitable from the first. It becomes inevitable only 
at the decisive moment. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 17 

4. This fact — that the characters acting dramatically 
to a logical conclusion in a crisis are the main object of 
attention in the conte — must be borne constantly in mind. 
In application, the principle permits a wide latitude; in 
the hands of some writers, it may even seem to be disre- 
garded without interfering with the success of the story; 
but it is nevertheless fundamental, and examination will 
show no successful story in which it has not been respected. 
For the conte exists for the sake of an effect that cannot 
he produced except with the aid of conclusive action taking 
place in a time of crisis; whatever does not help to cause 
this action, or to create the critical situation or free it of 
obscurity, has no place in the plot development ; 7 and mat- 
ters that help to rid the situation of obscurity, or to create 
the crisis, or to cause the action, belong in the plot, but 
belong there only in so far as they do actually thus con- 
tribute to the crisis. 

5. Let us emphasize the fact that the short story tends 
to present only the incidents and elements of the crisis at 
its height, subordinating or suppressing all unessential pre- 
liminary matters.* How characteristic this method is of 
the short story (conte) — as it is in fact of the short drama 
also — is shown by the assertion of excellent critics that 
the true short story is produced only when the crisis alone 

7 To say that it has no place in the development of the plot is 
not to say that it has no place in the story. It may have uses 
as an aid to characterization, theme emphasis, atmosphere creation, 
etc. So used, it does, however, contribute at least indirectly to the 
plot development. 

8 The student is cautioned to bear in mind that we are now 
speaking of action, incident, and plot only. We shall see later 
that for its total effect a story may require the introduction of 
material that is not essential to the plot when considered by itself. 



18 Shobt Stories in the Making 

bufwlw' ? gh% Under8t0 ° d ' the assertion is t-; 
but w thou explanation it is likely to mislead. For the 

g« fo a mtorf «^ ott o/ a#Bfre a< a certain 

Triirsi 6 eitherae briefest **» * «- - - ^ 

penorf Sometimes, lt is true, the plot permits the almost 
complete suppression of preliminary explanatory inc Z- 
rt is merely hinted at-suggested through some speech or 
act belonging to the eritieal situation Itself. Moreover 
this suppression is characteristic of the theoretically ideal' 
Pot. But many things theoretically ideal are not practi- 
cally ideal and the preliminary incident may he VZ 

Zln DM 6 CTiSiS ?1* Wm ^^ f^narZiZ. 
-thus, in De Maupassant's The Necklace we are carried by 
he preliminary plot-matter through a period of ten yTars 
through all which time the grand climax, the height of the 
S Kr^ M ° r — ^ d ^ moLnl th 
is ou tl ■ ° CCUpieS k,t a minute or so of ti^i " 

without h " " " Singk Sh ° rt S P eech ' «*» «f ^elf, 

^ would VT " SiWn by ^ PreIimiM ^ -tier 
it would be forceless and artistically unintelligible 

y rs-'yetD M Pen °f' ^ trUth ' 6Xtmds wer *» 
years, yet De Maupassant's story is as thoroughly a short 

n7the 7 r" a " PrelimiM ^ matter - 4r ssed 
and the climactic moment alone presented. A study of 
The Necklace will make this plain. (Incidentally too 
will show he student that in stories of this type tie plot is 
Uhely to ,ndude several preliminary or preparaoryJt 

neigtit of the mam crisis.) 



Theory of the Short Story Type 19 

VI. Singleness of Effect is Necessary to the 
Short Story 

1. The artistic success of a conte, like that of the one- 
act play, is to be judged by the singleness of the effect 
or impression that it produces. An impression so strictly 
single is demanded of no other type of fiction except the 
play. Few novels or romances, even purpose novels, yet 
approach the conte in concentrated singleness of effect ; and 
in some respects such effectiveness is beyond attainment 
by the longer forms of fiction. In poetry, only the lyric 
can be compared with the conte with reference to concen- 
trated impression ; for the purpose of the lyric is, to con- 
vey to the hearer a single poignant emotion. The tale may 
produce several effects and still not fail of its purpose; 
Rip Van WinMe, for instance, at one point leaves the 
reader impressed with Rip's good-natured vagabondage, at 
another with the mystery of his adventure, at another with 
the pathos of his return. It has no single impression on 
which readers would at once agree. But the true short 
story (conte) must produce just such an effect 

2. To define " single effect " is less easy than to feel the 
singleness of the effect when it is present. ~No one can miss 
the one overwhelming effect in the situation here outlined : 

The scene is laid in the poorly-furnished room of an 
employee of the Paris Electric Light Company. In one 
corner is a little bed, on which the child of the workman 
and his patient wife lies very ill. The mother tells the 
father that the doctor, who has been to see the child a short 
while before, has said that the crisis will come in about 
three days. 



20 Short Stories in the Making 

The man tells his wife that he ought to go to a meeting 
of the labor union to which he belongs, as important 
matters are to be decided; but says that he does not feel 
like going out, because of their baby's condition. His wife, 
however, urges him to do so. " Nothing can happen," 
she reassures him, " because the doctor said three 
days." 

Meanwhile, their friend, Mme. Marchaud, will stay 
with the wife. The women sit and talk. Madame tries 
to pacify the wife's wrought-up feelings by telling her of 
the sickness of her own youngsters. 

Suddenly a sound is heard from the bed. The mother 
springs up, hurries to the bed, looks at her baby, and 
screams. 

The baby is strangling. 

The friend rushes for the doctor. 

" May I ask you to leave the room ? " he says to the 
mother. " You will only suffer, and your presence will 
disturb me. There is no reason to worry. The crisis has 
simply come earlier than I expected. It is better as it is. 
Just a slight operation — I give you my word of honor that 
all will be well ! Go!" 

The mother leaves the room. Eeaching for the single 
electric light that illuminates the room, the doctor moves 
it next to the bed and, taking out his instruments, begins 
hastily to sterilize them, Mme. Marchaud standing by his 
side ready to help him. Quickly he bends over the bed and 
makes an incision. Another. Then another. 

Suddenly — darkness ! 

The lone light has gone out. 

" Great good God ! " he shouts wildly to the woman. 
" Why did you turn out the light ? " 



Theory of the Short Story Type 21 

" I didn't turn it out/' conies from the darkness. 

" Then quick, quick ! " literally screams the man. " On 
with it again ! " 

A pause. 

" But it won't light ! " from the woman. 

In the black room the doctor pulls at the switch; but 
the light will not come. The mother rushes in. 

At last — it seems hours — a candle is found. They light 
it with quivering fingers. They bend over the bed. 

Too late! The baby is dead. 

A noise. The sound of marchers is heard in the street 
below. It comes nearer ; it grows louder. They are sing- 
ing the Marseillaise. 

The door of the room bursts open and the husband, his 
face anush with triumph, stands in the entrance. 

" Victory ! " he cries. " Victory ! We've won ! 
There's not an electric light burning in all Paris to- 
night!" 9 

3. We feel this effect, but what is it? It is just one 
thing — the shock of horrified sympathy for the man who, 
through the very victory over which he is triumphing, 
finds himself the means of his child's death. And here we 
have a good practical test for singleness of impression. It 
is this. A single effect is susceptible of statement in a 
single sentence, not unreasonably long, which itself fulfills 
the requirements of rhetorical unity. To state it still more 
simply : A sentence is the expression of a single, complete 
thought. If the effect of the story can be summarized in 
such a sentence, it may fairly be regarded as unified. We 

8 From "Trained Nurses of the Thrill" (George Jean Nathan), 
Associated Sunday Magazine, May 25, 1913. By permission. 



22 Short Stories in the Makinc* 

may further test the effect by condensing the plot into a 
sentence in the same way. If the plot can be stated in a 
single unified sentence, then the story, if well constructed, 
should itself be unified and result in a single effect. 

4. While speaking of singleness of effect, we should 
consider the word " short " in the term " short story." 
Why short? Many contes contain only 1,000, 1,500, or 
2,000 words (the shorter stories often lack in literary 
quality). But, on the other hand, stories as long as 8,000 
and 10,000 words, and even more, are accepted by some 
editors. Indeed, fiction running to 40,000 words or more 
(10,000 or 15,000 words longer than some novelets, and 
only 20,000 words under the length of writings sometimes 
classified as novel) is properly deemed short story, pro- 
vided that it otherwise meets the requirements imposed on 
this form of writing. 

5. The fact is, that the conte does not have to be notably 
short. Usually it is short, however, because it seeks the 
singleness of effect described above. Comparison with the 
drama is here useful again. We have already seen that 
the short story and the one-act play are especially near 
akin. We know, too, that even the most intense and closely- 
wrought drama is hard to watch for three hours; the 
tendency is, to keep the time down to two hours or there- 
about, because a longer time is likely to dull the spectators' 
impression. The play is planned to make its impression 
within the time for which the close attention of the specta- 
tors can be held. The one-act play ordinarily takes 
still less time than does the two- or three-act play, and 
it is found to produce a correspondingly more unified 
impression (not invariably a deeper impression, how- 
ever) . 



Theory of the Short Story Type 23 

6. In this fact we have also the reason for the shortness 
of the short story. It is planned to be " taken in " at a 
single sitting — to be read through without interruption; 
to be grasped, understood, and felt as a whole. If the 
reading of it be interrupted, the impression, the " spell " of 
the narrative, is broken. The powerful effect of the conte 
depends in no small degree upon this fact : the narrative is 
not too long to be completed in one absorbed reading. 

7. The wide range between the longest and the shortest 
contes commonly accepted by editors — from 800 words to 
8,000, 10,000, and occasionally 15,000 — is to be accounted 
for by two things. First, many readers are not capable of 
concentrated attention and continued understanding beyond 
a few hundred words ; a story of 5,000 or 8,000 words is 
beyond their powers. Second, the adequate development 
of some plots, or the adequate presentation of the full 
story material, requires in some instances only 1,500, 
2,000, or 2,500 words; in others, adequate presentation 
demands eight or ten times as many. The student should 
not be misled by any insistence upon the need of com- 
pression in the short story (and compression is needed) 
into thinking that absolute brevity, too, is essential. 
Adequate presentation is essential; brevity is not, provided 
that singleness of effect is preserved. And as a matter of 
fact, an educated reader can read a close-wrought story of 
40,000 or 50,000 words at a sitting, and get from it its 
single dominant impression. But few single critical situa- 
tions involve an amount of essential facts so great as this 
for their adequate understanding and conclusion, or call 
for such amplified development as a means of producing 
their effect. 



24 Short Stories in the Making 

VII. The Conte May Aim at Different Kinds of 

Effect 

1. We have been insisting strongly upon the supreme 
importance of the plot. Lest that insistence result in a 
serious misapprehension, we must now insist also on a 
vital distinction. Plot is of supreme importance to the 
structure and outcome of the story, hut the plot may he 
of minor importance in producing the effect of the story. 

2. We will examine this assertion more closely. It 
depends on this fact: the conte involves two chief factors 
toward final effectiveness — an outcome and an impression. 
The outcome belongs to plot only; the impression is the 
result of plot combined with various other elements, and 
these other elements may in their importance as impres- 
sion-producers quite overshadow plot. Let us make this 
still clearer by restating once more. 

3. The plot is the logical summary of that body of 
incident and event - which creates and constitutes the 
dramatic crisis. The essence of the short story is people 
acting dramatically in a time of crisis. In order to pro- 
duce a single crisis that shall be single and unified in 
effect, the plot must be close-wrought, single, and unified. 
But this crisis does not have to he itself the most im- 
portant thing in the story. It may exist either for its 
own sake, or merely for the sake of affording effective 
presentation of other impression-producing elements. But 
however this be, we shall ultimately perceive that underly- 
ing this total effect of the story, the most important ele- 
ment contributing to the outcome through which the effect 
must at least in part always be reached, — are persons 
acting, each according to his character, in a crisis brought 



Theoey of the Short Story Type 25 

about by a dramatic plot. Without persons, and without 
certain things done by these persons in the course of a 
crisis, there can be no outcome of the dramatic sort — and 
therefore no short story (conte). 

4. Now these persons, doing what they thus do in the 
surroundings and under the conditions determined by the 
dramatic crisis, may, according to the management of the 
story, thus produce in us any one of four predominant 
impressions ; namely — 

(a) Impress us with a theme (thematic story) ; 

(b) Impress us with the qualities of their own charac- 
ter (character story) ; 

(c) Impress us mainly with the incident and action 
of the plot (plot story) ; or 

(d) Impress us most distinctly with a feeling; perhaps 
merely of the conditions and environment surrounding 
them, and of which they are a part, during the time in 
which they are in action, and perhaps of a deeper emo- 
tional or spiritual quality (subjective coloring) belonging 
to them and their deeds (atmosphere story). 

5. We see, then, that the materials and essential 
elements of a story, gathering round and depending on 
the persons-in-action and governed by the plot, can be 
so managed as to produce stories of different classes; and 
these classes can be discriminated one from another 
according to a clear, logical principle. Neither plot, nor 
substance or subject-matter, affords such a principle. Plot 
especially does not, for plot is essential in every conte. 
But in the effect produced by the different possible ways 
of managing the materials and elements (including the 
persons-in-action) which are found in the short story, we 
have a safe classification by which to distribute contes into 



26 Short Stories in the Making 

groups. According to this principle, every short story will 
fall into one or another of four classes, as the emphasis 
may be placed on one or another of its four elements; 
namely, (1) theme; (2) character; (3) plot, incident, and 
action; (J/-) atmosphere (total conditions and environ- 
ment; subjective coloring). 

VIII. Some Short Stories Emphasize Theme 

1. The conte that emphasizes theme is either among 
the easiest to write, or among the hardest. If it attempt 
nothing more than to present a " moral " — that is, if it is 
nothing more than a piece of didactic writing in narrative 
form — it is comparatively easy of composition ; it has only 
to announce its theme, or moral, group a set of incidents 
together that make the moral idea, or lesson, that it 
presents obvious to the reader, and so end. But the short 
story that does not aim at bald didacticism is a far 
different and more difficult achievement. 

2. The baldly didactic narrative scarcely deserves the 
name story, for in desire to make its moral obvious, it is 
ready to sacrifice all the literary qualities. It amounts 
to little more than argumentation masquerading as narra- 
tion. But the literary story that concerns itself with 
the effective presentation of a theme is, on the other hand, 
thoroughly artistic. It strives for impression, not for 
conviction or conversion. Therefore it is careful to 
characterize, to find adequate motiving and true-seeming 
incident for its plot, and to create a setting and environ- 
ment equal to their task of giving atmosphere. 

3. Thus to work into a consistent artistic whole signifi- 
cant traits of character; true human motives resulting 





Theory of the Short Story Type 27 

in convincing acts that illustrate and develop the theme; 
and a coherent body of incident that likewise demonstrates 
a central thought ;-~and withal to keep this central theme 
itself clear, prominent, and dominant — this demands great 
power of imaginative conception and high skill in literary 
construction. We will therefore drop out of consideration 
the merely didactic narrative and, in further mention of 
the thematic story, understand that it is the true short 
story emphasizing theme to which we refer. 

4. The thematic conte, so limited, may be either a pur- 
pose or a problem story, or a pure-theme story (see par. 
13). The purpose story is the literary parallel of the un- 
literary didactic narrative. It differs from the didactic 
narrative by giving adequate attention to those elements of 
fictional material which we found the didactic narrative 
neglecting: character, atmosphere, and well-motived plot. 
It establishes its theme by means of an impression depend- 
ing upon artistic method. Character, plot, incident, and at- 
mosphere are used to emphasize the theme, and the theme 
is emphasized in order that the reader may be persuaded 
to espouse some theory or belief. The purpose story aims 
at conversion, it is true ; but it aims at conversion through 
artistic effect. 

5. We must observe here that excellent authorities main- 
tain the impossibility of an effective purpose short story. 
They urge that conversion cannot be the aim of the conte ; 
that the presentation of arguments is not consistent with lit- 
erary effect ; that short stories do not afford scope or room 
for marshaling facts and debating a proposition; and that 
any theme about which there is a division of opinion is 
unsuited to the short story, because the short story must 
immediately appeal to each of its many classes of readers. 



28 Shoet Stories in the Making 

6. Now it is true that no great number of true contes 
aim at convincing or converting the reader, and that those 
which have this aim often fail in it. But one reason for 
these facts is, the difficulty of constructing an artistic 
purpose story — one that does not drop into the merely 
didactic class; and perhaps another is, the feeling which 
writers have — brought about by commercial necessity — 
that stories seriously attacking a disputed theme will have 
less chance of a market with editors. That such stories 
will sell less readily is true, not because the conte cannot 
be a purpose story, but because editors are fearful of 
offending readers who may not agree with the theme 
advanced, and of wearying that not inconsiderable class 
whose mental energies faint in presence of any effort 
greater than that necessary to wrestle with the impressive 
moral truth of " See the man ! " and " This is a cat." 

7. But inherent reason there is none why a narrative 
built upon a dramatic plot and producing a single effect 
should not aim, through this effect, to persuade or convert 
the reader to a definite theory or belief. That such short 
fiction is influential is indicated by the little whirlwinds 
of discussion that occasionally arise over stories thus ad- 
vocating a cause by embodying its appeal in the impres- 
sion created by well-managed narrative. Only the 
editors who get the letters of approval and protest know 
how impressive such an appeal may be. 10 

10 American drama has in recent years supplied some interesting 
examples of purpose plays — naturally analogous to purpose short 
stories. Study of The Lure and The Fight, each presented 
in New York City at the beginning of the season of 1913-14, will 
be suggestive. So will consideration of their fate, illustrative of 
the grotesque unwillingness of certain classes of people to let either 
drama or literature offer an interpretation of life by presenting it 



Theory of the Short Story Type 29 

8. We are therefore compelled to conclude that the 
short story may be written " with a purpose/' but that 
the artistic success of the story so written will depend 
mostly upon the literary gift and skill of the author. If 
he present his theme artistically embodied in concrete 
facts that are truly significant of human nature and life, 
so managed that they produce a single, dramatic effect, we 

as different from what it conventionally is supposed to be. The 
attacks upon these plays will give the writer an idea of the re- 
ception likely to be met at any time by problem or purpose stories; 
although, to be sure, a story may escape much of the promi- 
nence that a play has which becomes the subject of public discus- 
sion. 

Probably the writer's conclusions will not be much changed by 
considering what explains but does not alter the situation; 
namely, that the fate of the plays mentioned seems to have been 
largely the result of a newspaper raid carried on by editors and 
reporters with the zest which most people feel when they have got 
hold of " a good thing " and have succeeded in persuading their 
conscience that it is their duty to make the most of it. Having 
observed the methods of several such campaigns — that, for instance, 
against Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession — the present writer 
cannot convince himself that they represent any " popular uprising '* 
until the " revolt " has been stirred up. An admirer of New York 
City journalism, he nevertheless feels that the methods employed 
in some of these instances are a reproach to the profession. The 
news " stories " and the headlines over them were alike " editorial " 
and " colored " in character — full of expressions of opinion and 
inflammatory in tone; yet the highest ideal of good newspaper work 
is that of giving the facts, and giving them uncolored. 

However, that (whether sincerely or insincerely) the papers thus 
at times descend to sensationalism, and that their power is sufficient 
to stir up prejudice that neutralizes the artist's aim and wrecks 
his reasonable expectation of earnings, puts the author face to 
face with a serious personal problem. Shall he present life as he 
sees it, running the risk of vilification and probably business ruin, 
or shall he conventionalize and popularize his work, consenting 
to take the artistic " Easiest Way " ? 



30 Short Stories in the Mazing 

have no right to quarrel with him because the facts thus 
presented carry a logical corollary that convinces us. 

9. Unlike the purpose story, the problem story does not 
try to convince the reader that its solution of the problem 
is the right solution; it endeavors merely to lay before 
him a clear proposal of the problem involved by the situa- 
tion, whatever that be. To understand " problem," we 
must, however, consider the term " crisis." 

10. The conte requires a crisis. Crisis exists when the 
character of the persons and the nature of the incidents are 
such that a conflict of interests, desires, or duties is 
brought about — that is, when the plot has developed what 
is called a complication. If the person decides or acts 
in one way, a certain set of consequences will follow; 
if he decides or acts in another way, an altogether different 
and probably quite opposite set of consequences will follow ; 
and it is immaterial whether at the moment of his de- 
ciding or acting he know that he is doing something 
to bring on such consequences, or not. The critical 
moment, now, is that in which he makes the decision or 
performs the decisive act. (This is not necessarily the 
moment of supreme impression, i.e., the climactic height.) 

11. Now the purpose story and the problem story 
(like all other short stories, or contes) have each a crisis, 
which — technically — is ended with the decisive moment. 
Moreover, each presents a problem, some question of right 
or wrong, or better or worse, out of which its crisis grows. 
Still further, they center the interest on this problem; 
they lay it before us with the implied question, What 
is best to do in such a situation? In which way ought 
this person to decide, or in which way will it be more 
fortunate for him to act ? 



Theory of the Short Story Type 31 

12. We now come to the difference between the purpose 
and the problem story. Having once laid its problem 
before us, the purpose story does one thing, the problem 
story another. The purpose story not only solves the 
problem, but solves it in the way that, it would persuade 
us, is the only true or right way. But the problem 
story either does not solve the problem at all ( The Lady or 
the Tiger?), or it solves it so impartially as to convey no 
opinion of its own concerning the expediency or rightness 
of the solution. 

13. In other words, the purpose story answers for 
us the question, What is best? and intends this answer 
to satisfy and convince us. But the problem story (al- 
though of course it usually solves the complication of the 
plot) does not attempt at all, notwithstanding this solution, 
to answer the question, Which is right or what is best? 
It aims only to lay the problem clearly before us, leaving 
us, uninfluenced by the plot outcome, to decide on the 
answer for ourselves. In such stories (we must be sure 
to remember) the outcome is an artistic or dramatic out- 
come, not an ethical inference; it works out the plot to one 
of its possible conclusions, but this conclusion does not 
answer, and is not meant to answer, the question of right 
or wrong, or better or worse. Notwithstanding the plot 
outcome, the problem is left with us still unanswered. 

14. The third kind of thematic story we have not yet 
discussed. This we called the pure-theme story. In fact, 
however, purpose stories, problem stories, and all other 
contes of the thematic class, are pure-theme stories; for 
by theme we signify the central topic or proposition, the 
ultimate working-thought. 11 If the writer's intention be 

11 See paragraphs 19 and 20. 



32 Short Stories in the Making 

to convince and convert, he nevertheless must reach his 
end by dramatically developing his theme. If his inten- 
tion he to propound a problem, this very problem is the 
sum and substance of his theme. 

15. But besides the two sorts already discussed there 
remain the great majority of thematic stories. In these, 
the author's immediate intention is neither to convert 
nor yet to propound problems as such. Instead, starting 
with some central thought or proposition, he strives to 
build this up and amplify it in a course of dramatic 
narrative, until he has transformed it from a bare logical 
proposition into a coherent body of action, character, and 
setting, making of it a portrayal which can leave but one 
main impression. By employing dramatic narrative, he 
gradually enlarges on and develops his proposition until 
it reaches the reader as an impression, unified, whole, and 
artistic, realized through the imagination and emotions 
rather than through the reason or the intellect. This 
dramatic bodying forth of a proposition or a theme it is — 
whether the theme be bodied forth solely for its own 
sake or with a purpose also to convince or to propound 
a problem — that makes the thematic story effective; and 
it is emphasis laid especially upon the theme that produces 
the thematic story. 

16. Before closing this section we should make note 
of one further fact about the theme. In one sense, every 
story has a theme. Yet many stories have no immediate 
theme ; their " theme " is an exceedingly general proposi- 
tion, perhaps even nebulous in its universality. 12 In 

12 The theme is virtually the " masterplot " — a conception, or rather 
a proposition, of so general a character that it can be bodied forth 
in a large number of distinct plots and stories. See plot germ, 
working-plot, etc. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 33 

stories of this kind, the working-plot is likely to be mis- 
taken by the careless thinker for the theme itself. But the 
plot is not the theme; it merely outlines the body of 
incident which, combined with character-portrayal and 
atmosphere, will body forth the theme. Concrete examples 
will enable us to realize the nature of the general, remote 
theme in contrast with the specific, prominent theme 
characteristic of the thematic story. 

17. In " Nine Assists and Two Errors " (Charles E. 
Van Loan, Saturday Evening Post, May 31, 1913) the 
theme is: A winning personality overcomes prejudice 
and commands friendship. A thousand plots might be 
built up to present this theme. It is so general that, in a 
story of much incident, characterization, or atmosphere, it 
is likely to be overlooked entirely — not a bad thing for 
artistic effect, provided only that the reader feel the 
theme, even though he is not consciously aware of it. And 
in fact some thought is required to determine the ultimate 
theme of this story. But its plot is easily stated. A 
young man, ambitious to be a baseball pitcher, but quite 
without ability, through his pleasing personality over- 
comes the prejudice of a manager, gets on the team, and 
actually persuades the " old man " to " throw " an unim- 
portant game in order to help him win his lady-love, an 
admirer of ball-players (a surprise element is introduced 
by making the lady-love the manager's daughter). The 
story is a character, atmosphere, and humor story, not a 
story of theme ; and only upon consideration can we deter- 
mine the underlying conception which the plot embodies. 

18. But in " Nerve " (by William Slavins, Colliers, 
September 20, 1913) the theme is intentionally made 
prominent by the Writer. In this story (which is taken 



34 Short Stories in the Making 

merely at random as an example) there is a philosophical 
introduction, mainly dialogue, wherein different views of 
the same question are presented ; and in the course of the 
dialogue the man who presently tells the story that exem- 
plifies the theme, says : " To my way o' thinkin' a man 
shows clean game when he does the thing that's hardest 
for him, whereas the same thing might be just like eatin' 
a meal to me." Here we have the theme stated in exact 
words — thought out and shaped up for the reader's atten- 
tion before any element of the plot has been introduced. 
In fact, the introduction is no true part of the actual plot 
and story ; it is merely the author's device in this instance 
for making certain that the theme is emphasized so plainly 
that no reader, in the interest of the story itself, shall 
overlook it. 

19. In the two stories here cited, we have therefore 
excellent though haphazardly chosen examples of extremes 
in theme importance. But the fact that in Mr. Van Loan's 
story we really do not need at all to know the theme, and 
yet with a little thought can readily find it, illustrates 
this truth: Every conte embodies a theme, no matter how 
general or remote this theme may be; for no reasonable 
plot can be stated, based on the realities of life, that does 
not exemplify or contain in the concrete some truth of 
human existence. Were it otherwise, the story would be 
untrue. 

20. The thematic story, we may here remark, is ex- 
ceedingly adaptable to purposes of direct interpretation. 
We have already noted that the best fiction does more than 
merely interest ; it contributes to the better comprehension 
of life itself. It brings before the reader, in coherent 
inter-relationships, motives, influences, deeds, ideals, char- 



Theory of the Short Story Type 35 

acter; and when he comprehends these relationships, he 
comes into possession of a theory, a view, or a principle of 
human nature and its workings as the author conceives 
it to be. This conception on the part of the reader is 
identical (at least theoretically) with the conception on 
which the author built up his story; that is, with the 
theme itself. Therefore, the writer who wishes particularly 
to interpret life — to give the reader an explanation and 
simplification of life as it appears under certain definite 
conditions — has an effective means in the thematic story ; 
for in the theme he summarizes his interpretation, and in 
the development of his story constantly emphasizes and 
illustrates this theme. 

21. From these explanations, one important conclusion 
follows. Unless one is writing a thematic story, he need 
not worry about finding a theme with which to begin. 
If the plot he well ouilt and the action truly motivated 
in character, they will inevitably embody a theme. The 
heginner, therefore, will do as the experienced writer often- 
est does: first seek a plot, or at least the " germ " of a 
plot. When the plot idea, or germ, is discovered, it will 
develop into a story if rightly managed; and behind the 
story there will always be a theme. 

22. Unless the presentation of an emphasized theme 
be the writer's main object (let us repeat), he need not 
worry about anything at first but the creation of a plot, 
with its developing material. True, he cannot build a 
plot without realizing that in it is embodied some central 
idea or proposition. But the gift of art is, to present 
things in the concrete; and its value is, that as it sees 
deeply and truly, that which it presents concretely is 
itself, by reason of this grasp and insight, an illustration 



36 Short Stories in the Making 

of or a commentary upon life or character. A clearly 
visioned, truly motived story, therefore, always contains 
some inevitably embodied theme ; fit matter for reflection. 
But it is reflection on the part of the reader. To him the 
writer had better leave the discovery and weighing of 
the theme, provided only that the story as the writer cre- 
ates it, incarnates this controlling conception in a body of 
coherent fact and action, true to human nature and to life. 

IX. Some Short Stories Emphasize Plot 

1. We have already seen that the final effectiveness of 
the conte involves two chief factors : an outcome, and an 
impression. " Outcome " we are to understand somewhat 
narrowly. The incidents and action of the story bring 
forth a final deed, incident, or situation — the outcome; 
something done or happening that puts a close to the 
series in such a way as to be the conclusion of the whole 
matter — the consequence and end of what precedes. 

2. Some outcome is necessary to the conclusion of every 
short story, but this must not be thought to mean that the 
outcome itself is always the principal source of the im- 
pression. " Impression " indicates the sum total of the 
effect worked on the reader by the story — aroused interest, 
stirred emotions, character appreciation, etc. — united and 
merged in one definite, single, predominant effect. 1 * In 
making this impression, theme, character, atmosphere, and 
plot have each a part; but in one type of conte, that 
which emphasizes plot, the plot of course is the leading 
impression-maker. In the plot story, the total effect must 

18 Inasmuch as this effect is worked by stimulating fancy, imagina- 
tion, and emotion, the impression is predominantly emotional in 
nature. See Sec. XI., 14. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 37 

mainly depend on the two plot parts ; namely, the incidents 
and action that produce the outcome, and the final situation 
and outcome itself. 

3. The plot story therefore must have much quick 
action, stirring incident, adventure, surprise, mystery; 
complicated situations, romantic situations, etc. Not that 
all of these are likely to be found in any one story, but 
that every one of them is likely to supply the material for 
a plot story or to constitute an important element in its 
effectiveness. 

4. Tor the sake of simplicity we may include all of 
these characteristics, and any others belonging to the plot 
story as such, in three categories. We shall then see that 
the plot story is a story in which the effect is produced 
through (a) lively action, (b) abundant incident, and (c) 
abundant activity. Roughly defined, an incident is one of 
the single coherent events included in the story as being 
either essential to the action or as otherwise clearly contrib- 
uting to the total effect. Action is the combination and 
advance of incident and events toward a definite outcome 
in accordance with the scheme provided by the plot. 
Activity is the behavior, acts, deeds, and " business " (stage 
meaning) of the persons singly or together. Quick action, 
abundant incident, and much activity, are the characteris- 
tics of the plot story. 14 

5. Classification of plot stories into sub-groups is diffi- 
cult. We may, however, further indicate the nature of 

14 Somewhat more loosely, " action " carries the idea of " all that's 
doing " or " whatever is doing." It then indicates all that we have 
classified separately above. — A story may include several groups 
of incident; incident groups may then be termed "events," the 
term " incident " being reserved for the single coherent event of 
smaller compass. 



38 Short Stories in the Making 

the plot story by mentioning various sub-types, provided 
that we do not regard these sub-types as clearly delimited 
and mutually exclusive. With this understanding, we 
may say that plot stories fall into two classes. They are 
either stories of ingenious complication or else stories of 
lively action. In the one case, the interest lies in the 
ingenuity of fancy, incident, entanglement, and solution. 
In the other, it lies in the excitement of the rapid move- 
ment, the quick passing from deed to deed, incident to 
incident, and event to event, up through a stirring climax 
to a stirring outcome. Usually, of course, rapid action and 
ingenious plot-complication go together. 

6. In stories of the ingenious-plot type, the attention 
is held, not primarily by the persons who act, nor by the 
surroundings or atmosphere in which the action takes 
place, nor by the theme embodied in the story; first and 
mainly it is held by the body of incident itself. What 
interests the reader is, the single incidents and successive 
events as they are wrought together, one by one, and the 
situation or situations 15 brought about by these incidents 
as they succeed and combine with one another, and so draw 
on toward the grand climax. 

6a. The more ingeniously these are wrought together, 
to arouse interest and yet to keep the outcome seemingly 
uncertain, the more concentrated will the reader be in 

18 "Situation" indicates the state of affairs existing at any- 
particular moment by reason of the development of the story up 
to that point; especially, the critical state of affairs existing at 
climactic moments in the progress of the action, usually those pro- 
duced by the culmination of a definite stage ( " movement " ) of plot 
development. In the theater, for instance, the curtain is not allowed 
to fall except when a " situation " has been developed to bring it 
down, thus marking the close of a scene or an act. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 39 

his pursuit of the plot to its conclusion. For it is the 
skill — indeed the ingenuity — -with which detail is woven 
in with detail and incident with incident, moving steadily 
toward an outcome the more eagerly anticipated because its 
nature cannot be accurately guessed— it is this that gives 
the ingenious-plot story its fascination. 

7. Various kinds of story are of the ingenious-plot 
type. The " surprise-plot " story is a good example. In 
this, the plot is skillfully shaped to lead the reader into 
anticipating a certain outcome, or to keep him from 
guessing the outcome that is intended ; then at the last — ■ 
and always suddenly if the best effect is attained — an un- 
expected outcome leaves him gasping with surprise. The 
surprise-plot story, well done, unquestionably is effective; 
and occasionally an editor is found who regards it as the 
chief among short stories, if not indeed the only sort 
worth printing. But this is an extreme opinion. Even 
the ingenious-plot conte can exist without a surprise out- 
come ; and a large amount of exceedingly valuable material 
could not be utilized at all by the short story if it had to 
be presented through a surprise plot. Imagine the render- 
ing by surprise outcome of such a tragic procession of 
events as that of Mrs. Wharton's Ethan Frome! Yet 
Ethan Frome — testing by ultimate standards — is worth 
dozens of the ordinary surprise-plot story. 16 

ie The purpose of this book being the explanation of the method, 
or constructional principles, of the conte, the author has but 
seldom introduced comment depending upon those larger esthetic 
principles by which final worth in literature must be estimated. In 
other words, he has for the most part refrained from judgments in 
which an attempt is made to evaluate stories, types, forms, or 
points of view. The few exceptions will (he trusts) explain and 
justify themselves. 



40 Short Stories in the Making 

8. Again, the surprise ending itself is subject to abuse 
— as in stories made to end with a surprise that shocks the 
sensibilities, or does illogical violence to the sympathies 
of the reader, or to his liking for the personages of the 
story. Indeed, the surprise ending can quickly grow 
into tyranny over its employer, becoming an offensive and 
a fatal trick. When it has thus established domination 
over a writer, he will use it in place and out of place, 
emphasizing trivialities, subjecting his plots to mechanical 
and artificial manipulations, and at the end introducing 
impertinent incongruities to the exclusion of serious con- 
clusions. In a word, abuse of the surprise plot is easy, 
and may result in flippancy, artificiality, and a general 
cheapening of effect. 

9. Mystery stories are another interesting and favorite 
sort of ingenious-plot story (the surprise ending is fre- 
quent in them). As mystery stories we may classify all 
stories of which the chief purpose is, to solve some problem 
of explanation, means, or discovery. Such for example 
are detective stories; ghost stories and other tales of the 
weird, horrible, or occult, when the interest lies in the 
explanation, not the phenomena ; 17 and many stories of 
crime or vengeance. 

10. Commonly, mystery stories assume a state of affairs 
such as seems well-nigh inexplicable, together with an 
apparently quite inadequate body of fact from which to 
solve the problem of explanation or discovery. From the 
facts thus assumed, with the discovery and introduction 
from time to time of additional facts, they proceed by 

17 When the effect depends on merely the presence of mystery, 
not on the explanation of it, we have an atmosphere conte, not a 
plot conte. 



Theoey of the Shoet Stoey Type '41 

reasoning (both inductive and deductive) through stages 
of advancement and renewed complication toward the final 
solution ; and at last, by a sudden decisive piece of logic — 
usually accompanied with action — bring forth the true con- 
clusion. The stages (" movements ") by which the denoue- 
ment, or final untangling, is approached, do not, however, 
always seem stages of progress. On the contrary, the facts, 
as the narrative proceeds, appear now to point to one con- 
clusion, now to another, and are all the time baffling; and 
their total effect prior to the completion of the disentan- 
gling is, to keep the reader excitedly puzzled about the out- 
come and eagerly interested to know it. 

11. To the beginner, one caution must be emphatically 
given about the plot in the plot story. It must not be 
overcrowded with either incident or action. True, it will 
be complicated; but all plots are that. This means no 
more than that it includes some element that checks, or 
stops, or changes, the otherwise plain course of the action. 
Without such an obstacle, there could be no conflict, no 
crisis, no uncertainty about outcome and result. In the 
short story that emphasizes plot, the number of such com- 
plicating influences tends to increase rapidly. But at 
their most numerous, they must not be so many that they 
congest the story, cramp the action, interfere with the just 
development of characterization, or require a total amount 
of setting out of proportion to the other narrative elements. 
!Nor must ancillary incident overflow either the plot it 
supplements or the other bounds of proportion. In other 
words, even the plot story must not be all plot and incident; 
there must be an adequate proportion of the other fiction 
elements. 

12. The reason for all this is very practical. The 



42 Short Stories in the Making 

conte must be short enough for reading at a single sitting ; 
excessive incident or action, with a due proportion of stag- 
ing and characterization, would extend the story beyond 
the time limit in which the necessary single effect can be 
attained. Since in the market few stories longer than 
8,000 or at most 10,000 words find a welcome, the practi- 
cal inadvisability of including copious incident or requir- 
ing unstinted action is evident. But except for this, 
no limitations need be observed so long as the inci- 
dent and action continue to contribute to the single effect 
desired. 

13. Turn now from the type of plot story in which in- 
genuity in construction and the creation and combining 
of incident is the leading characteristic, to the type in 
which action rather than ingenuity is emphasized. In 
the action type of plot story, the leading position probably 
is occupied by the adventure story. In company with 
this should be mentioned the stories that are built largely 
upon romantic elements other than adventure; for the 
two are difficultly separable. " Adventure " as just used 
has the older sense of physical adventure — that involving 
physical courage and endeavor, daring in the face of 
bodily danger, and the like. Naturally the story of in- 
trigue (when active behavior instead of ingenious plot 
dominates it) associates itself with the story of adventure 
and romance. 

14. The word " adventure " is however rapidly taking 
on a broader meaning, in which the merely physical con- 
notation is much less ; and this meaning is showing itself 
in recent literature, especially in fiction. We have had, for 
example, Adventures in Contentment (not cited, of course, 
as an example of fiction) ; and of late years fiction has 



Theory of the Short Story Type 43 

been rich in narratives that deal with industrial, business, 
and sociological emprise. To many of the incidents in 
such narratives, the term " adventure " is to be applied 
quite as justly as it was originally to the other kind of 
adventuring. These stories, we should note, have, however, 
a natural relationship with realism through dealing with 
matters that are so closely associated with ordinary life; 
hence they not infrequently develop a tendency to realistic 
treatment. The natural outcome is an effective if not a 
novel blending of romantic with realistic elements, produc- 
ing work of no little value in interpreting life in its 
daily aspects. But as the realistic elements increase, 
the plot naturally ceases to occupy so prominent a 
place; hence realistic stories of this sort (like most 
other realistic stories) soon pass out of the plot story 
class. 

X. Some Contes Emphasize Character 

1. " The proper study of mankind is man. 7 ' This is 
the underlying conviction of all good literature and indeed 
of all art. Whatever else finds a place in fiction, finds 
its place there because in some way it is associated with 
man and the life he lives. Nature, for illustration, enters 
into fiction because it forms so much of man's environment, 
stirring his love of beauty, terrifying him by the relentless 
power it exerts, stimulating him to effort in order to con- 
quer and dominate it, exalting him to awe and reverence 
by its sublimity. Plot and incident find a place in fiction 
because they show men in action under the manifold im- 
pulses and influences that shape human destiny. Theme 
is important in fiction because it supplies a means of sum- 



44 Short Stories in the Making 

marizing conclusions about man and his destiny, or of 
stating human problems in a suitable form for concrete 
observation, analysis, or demonstration. 

2. Accordingly, whatever material yields itself to fiction 
is material found in man's relationships with the universe ; 
whatever mood or tone or method is employed in treating 
this material, is employed because it is a mood or tone or 
method that springs from these relationships. From the 
most serious novel to the lightest skit, the final concern of 
the writer and of the reader is man and his existence, seen, 
of course, in the character and behavior of individual men 
and women; for fiction, being a form of art, deals as we 
saw with concrete instances rather than with general con- 
ceptions. 

3. These relations of man with the universe are three. 
He deals and struggles with, influences and is influenced 
by, the physical world ; deals and struggles with, in- 
fluences and is influenced by, other men; and deals and 
struggles with, influences 18 and is influenced by, the moral 
and spiritual world — the forces for good and evil that lie 
(or seem to lie) largely in himself. In all this dealing, 
struggling, and influencing, it is the character of the in- 
dividual that is principally involved. We may therefore 
say that character manifests itself — 

(a) In the dealings of men with the physical world. 

( b) In the dealings of men with one another. 

(c) In the dealings of men with their own moral or 
spiritual nature, and the forces that influence it. 

4. When therefore the writer creates a story that em- 
phasizes character, and emphasizes it successfully, he 
creates a story that, in its appropriate class of light or 

13 For instance, he establishes his own codes of morals. 



Theory of the Short Story Type 45 

serious, is exceedingly vital and worthy. For in a charac- 
ter we read, writ small and in a fragmentary monument, 
the nature and destiny of man. To the portrayal of sta- 
tionary character, and still more to the presentation of 
character in process of growth or deterioration, all the 
utility of plot, theme, and atmosphere, and of all other 
literary accessories of narration, may rightly be directed. 
Especially effective is a combination of characterization 
with theme emphasis ; for the theme embodies the central 
thought concerning life, and the characterization clothes on 
this thought with all the vraisemblance, all the true-seem- 
ing, of actual human life itself. 

5. Yet the beginning writer should not be led to 
suppose that he ought to turn his prentice hand to the 
character story only. Quite the contrary is true. He 
should first accustom himself to the management of plot ; 
for in the conte the most indispensable element is plot — 
even when the plot is wholly subordinate. And although 
the tyro in writing may soon begin to practice on character 
sketching, and even on characterization in dramatic nar- 
rative, he must not expect in any sudden burst of develop- 
ment to blossom into the master's skill of character treat- 
ment. 

6. There is too another reason for delaying besides 
that of making thoroughly ready before attempting the 
work of characterization in dramatic narrative. It is this : 
although as a type the character story probably is superior 
to any other of the individual types of conte, it is not by any 
means a universal favorite. A lamentably large proportion 
of readers cannot (if the truth must be told) appreciate 
or even comprehend it ; it commands a more limited public, 
perhaps, than any other type commands, unless it be the 



46 Short Stories in the Making 






atmosphere story. This assertion, of course, will not al- 
ways hold of the best short stories; but that is because 
the best short stories do not emphasize any one element 
at the expense of another, but emphasize proportionately 
theme, plot, atmosphere, and character; and they are, more- 
over, often so simple, so human, so " universal " in their 
appeal (as the cant phrase runs), that readers even of 
comparatively limited culture can enjoy them, even though 
unable to appreciate them. Saying this is but re-saying 
what is so well known already, that many of the true 
masterpieces of literature are — within limits — for all sorts 
and conditions of men. 

7. And yet even the tyro, delaying in order to make 
sure preparation before attempting the character story, 
will have the character story always before him as part 
of his ideal. For the plot story that is also a character 
story is doubly excellent ; the atmosphere story that is also 
a character story is doubly excellent, and the theme story 
that is not also a character story is doubly in danger of 
failure even as a theme story. To study human nature, to 
study men and their ways, to observe the thousand-and-one 
manifestations through which the temperament and the 
human nature of every individual may reveal itself, to 
perceive the innumerable influences that affect men, shape 
their character, and help to determine their destiny, and 
to strive always and unceasingly to body forth in story 
form the facts learned in the course of this never-ceasing 
study — this must always be the aspiration and aim of 
the true artist in fiction, unsubdued and unsubduable 
in him because it is the very essence and spirit of his 
genius. 

8. We should now define clearly to ourselves what 



Theory of the Short Story Type 47 

character is. All animal creatures may be said to have 
character. That is, they have a set of fundamental or 
primary- instincts, or natural tendencies or habits of re- 
action which have been developed by an age-long course 
of existence under particular conditions. These instincts, 
tendencies, and habits are common to all members of the 
family, and by virtue of them, all members of the family 
respond in the same way to the same stimuli and motives 
to action. 

9. But in each individual, especially in the higher 
forms of life, these instinctive, nature-given tendencies 
have been more or less modified by particular influences 
affecting the individual only, whereby the moods and acts 
of this individual are caused to vary from the family or 
racial standard, or norm. To illustrate: All horses have 
the same primary, fundamental, or nature-given instincts 
and tendencies (we will not confuse ourselves by consider- 
ing how domestication has modified these as they exist in 
the wild horse). Yet, notwithstanding these identical in- 
stincts and characteristics, one horse is affectionate and 
another fierce; one is patient, another nervous and im- 
patient; one trustworthy, another treacherous, and so on. 
Even different colts of the same mare and sire may have 
notably variant characteristics. This hasic nature in the 
creature, modified or shaped into individual traits and 
tendencies, is the character of that creature. It is 
manifested through the creature's behavior and con- 
duct. 

10. We may pause here to remark that there is one 
immense difference between the behavior and conduct of 
mankind and that of other animals. The action of man 
is reasoned; that of beasts is based upon no reflective 



48 Short Stories in the Making 

foresight. This fact is what makes drama and fiction 
possible, for it is what makes possible motive and therefore 
conflict — the conscious struggle between man -and the 
physical world, between man and man, between man and 
his own spiritual nature. The uncertainty, the variety, 
the comedy, the tragedy, all the interest of human life, 
spring mainly from this ability of man to perceive and 
consider alternatives, to weigh consequences, to pick and 
choose or predetermine (or at least attempt to predeter- 
mine) results. Fiction is interesting largely because it 
thus shows us man employing — or failing to employ — this 
faculty of reflective foresight; and motivation and plot 
are possible only because there exists this reasoning faculty 
in man. 

11. We return now to our consideration of character. 
Men as a genus, family, or class, have their dis- 
tinctive nature, their peculiar set of instincts, nature- 
bestowed tendencies, and habits and emotional reactions so 
long kept up that they have practically established them- 
selves as instincts. This is human nature — the whole set 
of instincts, tendencies, emotions, and motives common to 
mankind. And human nature is the basis of human 
character. 

12. But in character there is always a second element ; 
for character is the basic human nature shaped and modi- 
fied into individual traits and tendencies that are mani- 
fested in the conduct of the individual. This second 
element in human character we may say is temperament, 
the quality or disposition peculiar to the individual. This 
temperament, or temper of the individual (to adopt an 
Elizabethan term signifying quality as it results from a 
particular and successful admixture of ingredients), may 



Theory of the Short Story Type 49 

be the consequence of any of an indefinite number of 
modifying influences. Thus, it depends often upon con- 
stitution, upon nervous organization, or upon physiological 
conditions. Congeniality of surroundings or of occupation 
affects it wholesomely. Indeed, its healthiness largely 
depends upon the proper gratification of individual tastes 
and appetites. It is also partly determined by the in- 
dividual's amount of will-power, enabling him to adapt 
himself to his surroundings; and intellectual or spiritual 
discipline, resulting from either education or experience, 
will always result in an increased control of environment 
by the individual, and thus by controlling one of the most 
important shaping influences indirectly determine tem- 
perament itself. 

13. Again, habits affect temperament, whether they be 
developed through natural inclination or through con- 
straint. Years of study will unfit for active pursuits a 
man originally of the most active tendency. Teachers 
of composition afford another example. Required by 
their business to maintain constant watchfulness for small 
errors, they not infrequently find themselves developing 
querulousness and a tendency to petty fault-finding. How- 
ever, exhaustive enumeration of the influences that de- 
termine temperament is impossible ; for anything and 
everything, even interplaying qualities of human nature 
itself, may react on the individual to modify into variant 
aspects the elemental traits and qualities of our common 
human nature, and thus determine temperament. 

14. So much for the two constituents of human charac- 
ter. What then is character itself ? Character is the sum 
of the moral, intellectual, and physical instincts, tendenr 
cies, qualities, and habits of the individual, resulting from 



50 Short Stories in the Making 

the union of human nature and temperament, 19 and mani- 
festing itself in what he thinks and does. This manifesta- 
tion may he internal, appearing merely in the thoughts 
and imaginings of the man,, or external, appearing in 
action — his speech, acts, behavior, outward conduct. 

15. For purposes of dramatic presentation, only ex- 
ternal manifestations of character are available. Pure 
psychological analysis, or narration of psychological ex- 
perience — recounting the events in the march of conscious- 
ness, or picturing forth in its flow the so-called stream of 
consciousness — is not dramatic. Hence it is expedient, 
even though arbitrary, to exclude fiction that is developed 
by this method from the class of the conte. This is not 
to say, however, that there are no true psychological short 
stories. The true psychological conte, however, is that in 
which the mental state and action are not narrated, de- 
scribed, or analyzed directly, but are instead made clear 
through the truly dramatic — i.e., actional — means of 
external manifestation. What is said and done in the 
course of the plot development reveals (but does not relate) 
what the person is thinking and feeling. The psychologi- 
cal story that presents these mental states otherwise than 
by this truly actional method of speech and act, possibly 
should be regarded as in fact a peculiar class. We may 
call it psychological description, or psychological narration, 
or name its product the psychological-analytical narrative, 
etc. ; we may even argue that there is a dramatic quality 

19 The student of men in the mass will find various divisions and 
subdivisions between the race and the individual. Each of these 
will have its own distinctive characteristics — those of nationality, 
for example. Each social rank, each profession, etc., has its peculiar 
class characteristics. It follows, therefore, that characterization 
must take note of individual, of class, and of race traits. 




Theory of the Short Story Type 51 

in many psychological situations or operations. But the 
fact remains, that psychological analysis does not present 
persons acting; and therefore it is doubtfully dramatic in 
the sense required by the short story. However (although 
it has seemed well to discuss the matter rather fully here) , 
the problem of presenting psychological phenomena is in 
truth more a problem how to portray a person during his 
passage through a psychological experience than it is a 
question of character and its manifestation. 

16. We return therefore briefly to direct consideration 
of the short story that emphasizes character. The means 
whereby character can be dramatically presented in nar- 
rative will be discussed in some detail in a later chapter ; 
consequently we need here only repeat that speech and 
acts are the main, if not the sole, dependence of the author 
in showing forth to the reader through his imagina- 
tion the character of the persons of whom he is writing. 
Therefore, in the story written to emphasize character, 
speech and act will be prominent. They will not, however, 
be prominent for their own sake, or for the thrill they 
may be able to communicate through directly exciting the 
reader, as they are in the story that emphasizes plot. They 
will be prominent because in and through them the reader 
beholds character; they are the index, the outward symbol, 
the key, the manifestation, the effect of which character is 
the cause. And as the reader, in order to interpret them, 
must be able to translate the symbol into terms of the 
thing symbolized, to judge accurately what the cause is 
from seeing only its results, so the writer on his side must 
be able to translate character into suitable symbols (words 
and acts) ; to perceive what the true and natural results 
of any well-defined character, taken as the cause, would be, 



52 Short Stories in the Making 

and by depicting it through such results, or symbols, — the 
acts and speech of the persons, — make it apparent to 
the reader. 

17. The first task, therefore, for the writer of character 
stories, is the conceiving of a consistent, and, of course, 
true-to-nature character for each person in his story. By 
consistent, we do not mean a character in which are no 
conflicting elements, but a character in which (whatever 
the elements of conflict) there is no self-contradiction. 
How far the conflict between character elements may go 
without rendering the character self-contradictory, is 
shown by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps we should 
be safer were we to say merely that the conception must 
not seem to be inconsistent, or self-contradictory — that it 
shall stand the test of a sound plausibility based upon 
knowledge of man and men, and a strict observance of 
the possibilities of character as thus discovered. Charac- 
ters so conceived will be true to life, and will accordingly 
stand every test. We have, therefore, arrived at the point, 
to which we shall always find ourselves returning, at 
which we must recognize the fundamental importance of 
observing men and the ways of men and the influences that 
determine these ways — in other words, the importance of 
being familiar with character in detail. To write good 
fiction, one must know man and men, human nature and 
temperament ; and to know these, he must have been a close 
observer of men in their activities. 

18. Moreover, this knowledge must be practical, not 
theoretical. This assertion needs to be emphasized. 
Many writers — young writers of a scholarly turn especially 
— think that if they read books and gain an understanding 
of the elements of human nature as these are revealed in 



Theory of the Short Story Type 53 

poetry, fiction, history, or the like, they have qualified 
themselves for their work as writers. They are wrong. 
The writer of drama and dramatic fiction narrative must 
know men. He must have seen human life living itself 
in the lives of many individual men. He must know men 
so well that the human nature and the temperament in 
every individual will distinctly separate themselves to his 
understanding. He must know not only the types of men, 
but the individual variations that occur within the type. 
He must know what are the type actions that go with the 
standard instincts and emotions — but he must also know 
how these type actions are changed or modified in the 
individual. And all these things should be so familiar to 
him that, the moment he conceives a person of a certain 
type, he will be aware what that type of person will do 
in a given set of circumstances; and beyond that, what 
this one person he has conceived — an individual having 
his own character, made up of human nature modified by 
temperament — would do in the same set of circumstances ; 
for in the action of the individual will always be some 
degree of individuality, and the writer who knows men 
should from his knowledge realize instinctively what this 
individuality of conduct and speech will be. So intimate, 
so closely accurate, so extensive, so sure, should be the 
fiction writer's knowledge, not merely of man, but of men. 
He can never become perfect in it, yet he should never 
cease to perfect himself in it. And for this there is but 
one way — that of meeting and dealing with men closely 
and constantly. 

19. To the writer of contes in which character is em- 
phasized, such extreme familiarity with men is indispen- 
sable. For since he must make the words and acts of each 



54 Short Stories in the Making 

person clearly spring from and reveal the character of the 
person, he must know, even to the littlest, the words that 
men use, the tones in which they speak them, the gestures 
they employ and the occasions on which they employ each, 
the decisions — instinctive or reasoned — to which they 
come, the way they behave while coming to them, and their 
manner of acting (each according to his own character) 
in accordance with their decisions. To make the character 
story convincing, all such things must be set down, and set 
clown as they would be were the story a fact and not a 
fiction story, For if they are not set down as they would 
be in life, the reader will feel the incongruity, even if he 
cannot name it; and both story and character will disap- 
point him. Hence the chief study of the writer of charac- 
ter stories must be, how to set forth a varied body of 
speech and act that shall clearly reveal character, the 
character itself being consistent and true to life — to human 
nature, to class-type, and to the individual. 

XL Some Contes Emphasize Atmosphere 

1. Last of the four possible types of short story that are 
produced by laying emphasis especially upon a particular 
element, or factor, of fiction narrative, we name the type 
that emphasizes atmosphere. But in giving the atmos- 
phere story the last place, we are making it neither the 
least nor the greatest among these types. For the conte 
has its masterpieces of plot story, of theme story, of 
character story, and of atmosphere story ; and if we raise 
the question of comparative merit, we are likely to be 
forced, on consideration, to dodge it, answering that the 
greatest of short stories is not to be found in any one of 



Theory of the Short Story Type 55 

these special types as such, but in that conte which com- 
bines all these elements according to its needs, attaining 
its effect by a presentation of life through the artistic 
union of all the four. 

2. Nevertheless, considering as we are for the present 
the emphasis of particular elements in individual stories, 
we must in fairness set down, that the atmosphere story 
is often tremendously effective. As some of the most 
wonderful of modern paintings are those that have caught 
the atmosphere of the desert, the plains, or the sea, so some 
of the most wonderful novels and contes of our day are 
those that have caught the atmosphere rather than the 
details of phases of life — the spirit and essence of some 
environment in which life is lived significantly. 

3. Of the four elements of fiction narrative that we are 
considering, — theme, plot, character, and atmosphere — 
atmosphere is the hardest exactly to define; for it is not, 
like the others, reducible to a process, a formula, or a 
method, but is that more delicately impalpable thing, a 
subjective quality to be sensed or an emotional impression 
to be received. Therefore we can, before formulating a 
definition, profitably consider the thing itself somewhat. 

4. Atmosphere we may describe as the quality felt in a 
story or drama, through the impression created by setting, 
mood, character, action, theme, incident, persons, personal- 
ity (either that of the author or of the persons in the 
story), tone, and so on. Or we may call it the source of the 
total subjective impression left by the combined influence 
of all the elements, accompaniments, and surroundings of 
viewpoint, characters, action, and scene. The atmosphere 
of a story is the encompassing medium in which the nar- 
rative exists and moves. It is the psychological medium, 



56 Short Stories in the Making 

as the physical atmosphere, with all its attributes of light, 
warmth, translucence, rarity or density, color, stimulation 
or depression, clearness, heaviness, purity, etc., is the 
purely physical medium in which animal life exists and 
moves. Or it may he described as the sum total of 
environment, psychological and physical, as the habitat of 
an animal, with its peculiar set of physical, vegetable, 
geographic, climatic, animal, and animal-nature, condi- 
tions, constitutes the total of the environment of that 
animal. 

5. Atmosphere is, then, the total 'psychological, 
emotional, or tonal environment wherein character and 
action present themselves subjectively to the reader, 20 to 

20 The test of atmosphere is the presence of a quality in the 
narrative itself, permeative and intangible rather than explicit and 
locable. Upon further analysis, we should find that this impression 
of atmosphere depends on either or both of two qualities: first, 
the quality of place, environment, and determining conditions; 
second, the quality of mood. The first gives a sense of the milieu 
and circumstances; the second gives a sense of the tone — of the 
emotional quality and nature — belonging to the story, its persons 
or events. Roughly, the one is material, physical, or social, the 
other immaterial and psychological — the one perceived as external 
fact, the other as internal fact. But almost always they exist to- 
gether. The effect of either is always mainly emotional — that is, 
subjective. Hence our discussion of atmosphere has not attempted to 
separate them. — Let the student compare a mood story with a story 
of setting (realized best in the local-color story). Mrs. Wharton's 
Ethan Frome is pre-eminently a mood story; Harris Dickson's 
stories of negro life (Saturday Evening Post) are local color stories — 
almost any of the " Old Reliable " series will serve, as will most of 
Bret Harte's California stories, Mrs. Freeman's stories of New 
England, etc. Yet all such stories will reveal that (except when 
the setting is described merely for objective interest), the introduc- 
tion of an element of milieu or conditioning circumstance affects 
mainly the mood of the reader, thus giving him the impression of 
subjective tone or coloring in the story. We " sense " the tone and 



Theory of the Short Story Type 57 

create which, every artistic element unites which is capable 
of producing through literary means the impression of a 
physical sensation or a perception of mood, or of moral, 
spiritual, ethical or esthetic quality, or tone, thereby pro- 
ducing a sense of subjective quality. To phrase the 
thought in yet another way, atmosphere is the consequence 
of bringing to bear upon the reader the full power of 
subjective impression exerted through any sort of literary 
or dramatic device: its purpose being, to put him into 
complete emotional understanding or rapport (responsive- 
ness and sympathy) with the various elements of the 
story. It thus enables him both to perceive the external 
quality and to feel the internal quality and spirit — ac- 
curately and truly, because he feels not only the thing 
itself, but also the conditions and surroundings which are 
a part of it and of which it is a part. 

6. From this preliminary description of atmosphere, 
let us now formulate a working definition. Atmosphere is 
that subjective quality in a story resulting from highly 
characteristic elements, or accompaniments, conditions, and 
surroundings, of the setting, persons, character traits, and 
action; by virtue of which the persons, incidents, character, 
and action are seen in a medium of natural and significant 
psychological, tonal, or emotional environment of which 
they are a necessary part and which is a necessary part 
of them. Condensing this, we may say that atmosphere is 

quality of a scene rather than perceive it merely. Stevenson's The 
Merry Men; Hamlin Garland's early western stories (as in Main 
Traveled Roads), Poe's Fall of the House of Usher — these are 
merely a few of the stories that owe their subjective effect, or 
emotional impression, mainly to the combined influence of environ- 
mental and mood elements. For in successful writing, the two cannot 
be kept distinct. 



58 Short Stories in the Making 

that quality which produces its effect on the reader by 
means of a subjective coloring of any or all 21 of the 
elements of the story. Its impression is made almost en- 
tirely on the subjective sensibilities — on the emotions — 
and is made in either of two ways : first, by direct appeal, 
as when the material used itself is emotional and address 
is made outright to our subjective senses; second, by 
indirection, as when such aspects of objective matters are 
chosen for presentation as are associated with subjective 
experiences, these aspects being, therefore, sure to stimulate 
an emotional response even though doing so indirectly. 22 

31 A scheme will help to show forth the fact, as follows: 

1. Objective facts: setting, appearance of 
persons, costume, acts, deeds, incidents, 
etc. 

2. Determining conditions: influences of 
time, place, associates, social and in- 
dustrial environment, education, etc., 
etc., such as affect character, behavior, 
deed, motive, etc. These may be either 
(a) objective (see 1 above) or (b) sub- 
jective (see 3 below). 

3. Subjective facts: the relationships, in- 
fluences, and reactions that pre-emi- 
nently affect or belong to psychological 
experience — the inner life. 

Therefore, we may have either objective atmosphere or subjective 
atmosphere — that productive of mood or tone. Further, the story 
may be so written that its mood or tone will be the result of either 
(a) its own materials (complete detachment on the part of the 
author), or (b) the author's arbitrary selection of details to produce 
a particular mood or tone determined by himself (author's mood, 
or attitude). 

22 From what has been said, the conclusion follows, that the term 
subjective coloring is a full descriptive synonym for atmosphere, and 
perhaps even a more accurate term. 



Subjective coloring 
will be found inherent i 
in, or can be given 
to— 



Theory of the Short Story Type 59 

7. Among the elements that aid in creating atmosphere, 
setting is highly important. 'It is not to be confounded 
with atmosphere, although the terms are sometimes used 
synonymously; neither is it equal to environment. By 
setting we really mean the physical surroundings — what 
the stage manager would classify as scenery and properties. 
Setting is objective and can always be indicated by some 
direct method of description, although, of course, direct 
description is not necessarily preferable to other methods 
of presentation. Moreover, the mere introduction of 
description is not enough to give atmosphere, unless the 
setting and the description are themselves such as to be 
significant and produce the artistic effect desired. 

8. Environment — a larger term — implies not only 
setting, but also all other surroundings and accompanying 
conditions; and, therefore, it may be psychological and 
non-objective. Well indicated, environment is an effective 
producer of atmosphere — indeed, is perhaps the main de- 
pendence in most atmosphere stories. Among the elements 
entering into environment are time, place, occupation, 
moral and spiritual surroundings, and (in general) what- 
ever accompaniments of existence influence character and 
life. 

A. Time: Time may determine the atmosphere of a 
story. Thus, there may be stories wrth an atmosphere 
of war time or of peace ; of particular historical periods ; 
of Christmas, Memorial Day, or other holiday ; an atmos- 
phere appropriate to the night, to daytime, to spring, 
summer, fall, or winter, to sowing time or harvest time, 
etc. 

B. Place: Place may determine the atmosphere of a 
story. Thus, there may be stories with an atmosphere 



60 Short Stories in the Making 

of the streets, the theater, the church, the home, the 
amusement-park, the city, the country, the tropics, the 
school, the sea, the veldt, the plains, the jungle, the air 
(aeronautical stories), etc. 

C. Occupation: Occupation may determine the atmos- 
phere of a story. Thus, there may be stories with an 
atmosphere appropriate to medicine, journalism, the law, 
the ministry; to the life of the day-laborer, the iron- 
worker, the weaver or mill-hand, the fisherman, the soldier 
or marine, the professor, the housewife, the speculator, 
the gambler, the prostitute, the nurse, the clerk, etc. 

D. Other Conditions: Besides the influences such as 
have already been mentioned, almost innumerable items or 
elements of environment exist that contribute to the im- 
pression of atmosphere. Such for instance are illness in 
the household; educational influences; religious surround- 
ings; the character of associates; poverty, manners, 
personal tastes and habits ; dress ; eating ; — in brief, what- 
ever can be responsible wholly or in part for the mood, 
tone, or other quality essential in the life itself that is 
portrayed. The introduction of such items as material 
for narration can be so affected that it will cause the 
persons, incidents, and action to be seen in an encompassing 
medium of consistent, natural, significant psychological 
environment ; the story will, in all its parts, give evidence 
of the close observation, adequate comprehension, and full 
power of sympathetic presentation without which it will 
be deficient in that indispensable quality, subjective 
coloring. 

9. By way of concrete illustration, assume now that 
several clergymen are gathered in a vestry room to discuss 
a religious crisis. If the material be well handled, the 



Theory op the Short Story Type 61 

atmosphere will be an atmosphere of deep religious earnest- 
ness, with clerical and personal, manners seen in a setting 
of church surroundings. Now, enter to the clergymen 
an ex-pugilist, converted in a mission chapel but retaining 
all the mannerisms produced by his breeding in the slums. 
In the proceedings that follow, he is prominent; and 
inevitably his appearance, personality, speech, and be- 
havior modify the previous atmosphere. It may be more 
human; it certainly will be less clerical and churchly. 
Further suppose that the worldly daughter of the rector, a 
society girl, now comes into the action. She modifies the 
atmosphere anew ; her dress, her manners, her personality 
and ideals, are all felt, subtly but surely, in a changed 
quality in the situation. They suggest other influences in 
life than earnestness and religion, another outlook on life 
— an outlook foreign to the clergymen's and equally foreign 
to the crudely earnest pugilist's. Or let us assume a hos- 
pital ward, with nurses attending to their duties, and a 
pickle-faced martyr to her conception of duty haranguing 
on the subject of his soul an unfortunate nephew, occupa- 
tionally a ball-player, laid up in one of the beds. Merely 
to suggest such a combination of time, place, persons, and 
character, gives an impression of atmosphere — an atmos- 
phere individual and distinct. Then suddenly remove the 
maiden lady and in her place substitute a member of the 
invalid's team, airy, jovial, confident, and hearty. Presto ! 
the atmosphere is vitally changed. 

10. Or again, let us assume a tenement house in the 
city. The halls reek with the smell of cabbage, corned 
beef, and onion. Doors stand indecorously ajar, display- 
ing glimpses of disordered rooms, scattered garments, old 
brooms, boxes, slouchy women, and dirty shouting chil- 



62 Short Stories in the Making 

dren. Is not here an atmosphere of shiftlessness or in- 
competence? But add now some laughter and broad 
repartee. An impression of the element of irresponsible 
happiness supersedes the previous impression of shift- 
lessness. Then let the rent-collector and an officer ap- 
pear, with dispossess writs against one of the tenants; 
laughter gives way to grief, and neighborly merriment 
to neighborly sympathy. Yet again, suppose the author to 
conceive a story of village life, in which the selfish per- 
sistence of one man in keeping pigs produces unsanitary 
conditions from which an epidemic starts, causing the 
death of several neighbors' children. The author, tak- 
ing this theme seriously, turns out a story the atmosphere 
of which is heavy with selfishness and tragedy. And 
then suppose that he conceives his theme lightly instead 
of tragically, constructing a story in which neighborhood 
pigs, neighborhood rows, and simon-pure human nature 
supply a farcical narrative. The atmosphere is now 
quite changed. In these two instances, it is the author's 
viewpoint that determined what the atmosphere — and 
therefore the subjective effect on the reader — would be. 
Illustration could be continued indefinitely, but the fact 
is already manifest. Anything whatever that, whether 
by outright assertion or by reactive suggestion, serves to 
produce a subjective impression, to create the illusion 
of psychological quality, is atmosphere material. 

11. Atmosphere, we said, is hard to define. The at- 
mosphere story is hard to write — successfully. It is the 
work of the highly skilled ; for atmosphere is the fine flavor 
of literary and dramatic ingredients blended by a master. 
A writer may be able to develop a theme, construct and 
manage a plot, and portray a character successfully, and 



Theory of the Short Story Type 63 

yet fall short of attaining true, or natural, or satisfying 
atmosphere. 

12. For atmosphere is the product of high artistic 
gift rather than of immediate effort. Before there can 
be atmosphere there must be sharp and deep insight, 
catholic sympathy, and almost universal observation; and 
these must be accompanied by great powers of accurate 
literary expression. Without this observation, this 
knowledge of one's material in all its aspects, this under- 
standing and sympathy, or without the literary gift that 
enables one to give to others, through words, a realization 
of things as they have revealed themselves to him, — 
without these, there can be no fine exhalation of the inner 
nature of personality, surroundings, incident, and action 
into the illuminating, clarifying, softening, individual- 
izing, naturalizing, humanizing quality that we term 
atmosphere. 

13. Of which comment, the moral is this: Before 
attacking the atmosphere story, master theme, plot, and 
characterization; learn nature, human nature, and men; 
acquire the habit of observing with all the minute care of 
the scientist and all the sympathetic understanding of 
the artist; and develop a master's skill in exact words. 
When this has been done — when you can report the thing 
as in itself it really is — you will not have to strive for 
atmosphere. The atmosphere will create itself for you, 
secured surely and accurately through the truthfulness 
of your report. 

14. The student may feel some confusion about the 
relationship between atmosphere, as here defined, and the 
emotional appeal, frequently spoken of in discussions of 
fiction. The terms merely name different aspects of the 



64' Short Stories in the Making 

same thing. Atmosphere is a quality possessed by and 
permeating the story, and inherent in its parts and ma- 
terials. Then, having atmosphere, it has emotional ap- 
peal — is able to set up in the reader a subjective, or emo- 
tional, response to its own subjective, or emotional, qual- 
ity. The one is cause; the other is effect. As we have 
noted, any and every element of the narrative may and 
usually does have, in some degree, subjective coloring, 
or emotional quality. It follows that every part and 
portion of the narrative may have emotional appeal (sub- 
jective stimulus). One well-chosen word, expressing a 
clearly-sensed feeling of the author for some inherent 
quality or mood of the situation, the person, the charac- 
ter, the scene, the environment, the act, may tinge or 
dye all the story with this same quality or mood. Emo- 
tional appeal (or subjective stimulus), therefore, depends 
upon subjective coloring, i.e., atmosphere; and atmosphere 
depends upon the fineness of sense with which the writer 
feels the manifold qualities of his materials and the ef- 
fectiveness with which he is able to translate these quali- 
ties into the words with which he reports the story. 

15. Ultimately, then, atmosphere and subjective effect 
depend upon the author — first, upon the fineness, the 
sympathy, the comprehending power of his understanding 
and interpreting imagination, enabling him to put himself 
in every situation and in the place of every person in 
every situation, sensing deeply and truly the essential 
qualities inherent in them; and second, upon his well- 
considered selection of the particular qualities to be em- 
phasized and intensified for the purposes of the story. We 
shall see (XVIII. 3) that the story may be told from 
either of three main angles of view — as if it were nar- 



Theory of the Short Story Type 65 

rated by (a) an actor in it, (b) an observer merely, or 
(c) a person completely dissociated from its events in 
every way — and that the author cannot get far in plan- 
ning his story until he has decided which of these angles 
of view he will adopt for his narration. We must now 
note also that his attitude of sympathy and emotion as 
ivell as his angle of narration will mightily affect the 
quality discernible in his story. It determines the in- 
herent quality by determining the particular aspects of 
the materials which he shall select and the particular 
qualities in these aspects that he shall, by means of his 
treatment and expression, intensify and make dominant 
in the narrative. He may elect to be sentimental in at- 
titude; in which case he will select incidents, settings, 
acts, character traits, speeches, and situations, that are 
predominantly sentimental. He may elect to be pathetic ; 
in which case it will be the quality of pathos that he will 
seek in his selection of materials and his manner of treat- 
ment and expression. Or he may elect to intensify pathos 
into tragedy, or to assume a humorous 23 attitude ; his 
choice of materials, of treatment, and of expression always 
varying according to the requirements of this attitude. 

16. The attitude, therefore, or subjective point of 
view, assumed by the author toward his story, is what 
determines its emotional appeal, or subjective quality; 

28 The effect of the conte always tending to be in the main 
emotional, humor is suitable to it, but wit less so; wit being less 
emotional than intellectual in quality. The guises in which humor 
appear are: (a) permeative — dispersed throughout the story, re- 
gardless of its particular form or type; (b) comedy; (c) farce 
comedy; (d) burlesque. The presence of wit in dominating quantity 
tends to produce rather comedy of satire and irony than comedy of 
humor. 



6Q Short Stories in the Making 

and it determines this by determining the selection of 
materials to be incorporated in the story as a means of 
provoking in the reader a subjective response to the 
feeling of the author — of putting him into a subjective 
attitude corresponding to that assumed by the author. A 
word more, then, may be worth while about the means 
available for communicating this feeling, and provoking 
this attitude. The sense of the subjective coloring, of the 
emotional quality, is communicated, first, by the ma- 
terials themselves, and second, by the language chosen 
voith which to report them. The two means are of course 
always co-workers. But in the work of the inexperienced 
and the artificial writer, too much dependence on words 
and too little upon materials are often found; they de- 
pend on words, not facts, for effect. Yet the words can 
produce their effect only when they are fully adapted to 
the thought and emotion — only when they adequately and 
truly report the facts to express ivhich they have been as- 
sembled. Hence words merely, unbacked by feeling, are 
futile. The subjective quality must exist in the materials 
before words can be chosen fitly to embody, express, and 
communicate it. Yet the number of writers who depend 
on words instead of materials for subjective effect, is 
legion. 

17. The selection of materials, therefore, wherein the 
subjective quality is inherent — of materials that are sig- 
nificant of subjective quality and mood — is imperative. 
This selection well made, the adapting of the language to 
the material may call for either of two procedures : cutting 
down the number of words, or increasing the number of 
words, i.e., using more words with a view to the full com- 
munication of a sense of the subjective quality. Words 



Theory of the Short Story Type 67 

are to be increased when the facts themselves, less fully 
reported, will not sufficiently or certainly carry the effect 
of emotional quality. The author then employs epithets, 
descriptive phrases, and other quality- or mood-suggest- 
ing expressions — either denotative or connotative — in 
order that an adequate sense of the particular subjective 
quality may be aroused in the reader. Words are so used 
in the sentence, " Her vestal mannerisms and her too 
knowledgeable manner, as if she were overripe from mani- 
fold experiences of the world. ..." 

18. On the other hand, some facts and situations are so 
great and fundamental as to imply, without comment or 
addition, the quality or mood inherent in them. They 
make their emotional appeal simply, directly, and un- 
aided. The power and adequacy of the simple assertion, 
" Jesus wept," has been noted endlessly as an example. 
In dealing with such self-interpreting facts and situa- 
tions, the superb economy of speech often characteristic 
of the Bible is advisable. To be sure, every situation is a 
new situation, and therefore a rule unto itself; but no 
situation that is intrinsically emotional calls for much 
verbal exploitation. Such situations are those that most 
depend upon the primal, basic instincts and emotions of 
man; whereas those that depend upon less universal facts 
for their subjective quality may need interpretation. 
When, therefore, subjective effects are involved that de- 
pend upon acquired emotions, ideals, or points of view, 24 
fuller characterization is necessary; for the quality of 
these is at once more diverse and less familiar to general 

24 Such emotions, ideals, and points of view, for instance, as 
result from education ; from sophistication ; from economic and social 
status; from the refining influences of culture, etc. 



68 Short Stories in the Making- 

experience. Comparatively few words (for instance) are 
likely to be needed in conveying the emotional quality 
of a scene in which father and mother stand by the death- 
bed of their first-born; the situation carries and com- 
municates its own emotion. But writers have not un- 
happily expended pages in bodying forth the feelings of 
Penrod the grammar-school boy in some of the juvenile 
crises of life. The less obvious, the less familiar to 
general experience, the less an outcome of universal fact, 
the subjective quality is, the more likely it is to require 
fuller word-portrayal; the more it depends on universal 
fact, the more familiar it is to general experience, the less 
it will require multiplication of words to procure it 
comprehension and provoke response. 

19. With some more general explanation, we can now 
close this part of our discussion. As the story must have 
emotional, or subjective, quality, and as the quality pre- 
sented must be true, the author must, to produce the es- 
sential subjective coloring, have himself felt and com- 
prehended the feeling that he attempts to embody in his 
story. The more deeply and widely he has felt, therefore, 
the more will he be able to find in life, and to reproduce 
in his work, the essential elements of emotion. To have 
lived, to have loved, to have laughed, to have wept, and 
through accumulated experience to have ripened — this 
seems the logical preparation for the highest effectiveness 
in creating stories that will have emotional appeal — 
especially so in stories dealing with the more serious 
aspects of life. True, the exuberant fancy and spirits 
of youth make up to some extent for unripeness and in- 
experience — but not when the deepest meanings of exist- 
ence are to be interpreted. Youthfulness of spirit need 



Theory of the Short Story Type 69 

not end with the early years of manhood; rightly con- 
served, emotion strengthens and intensifies itself, not 
thins and perishes; and he can best portray life who 
through maturity of thought and feeling — through long 
experience — has most perfected his knowledge of life. 

20. But experience may produce, not ripeness, but 
that false maturity, sophistication. Better the green but 
vital imagination of youth than the mature but sophis- 
ticated indifference and cynicism of years. For deep, 
spontaneous, and natural emotion is not to be felt in 
sophistication. Neither is the sophistication belonging to 
a class, society, or age, to be permitted to pass its conven- 
tions and attitudes off in the place of true emotion. These 
things abound in subjective quality material, but are 
never to be mistaken for or presented as true emotion, and 
the author must preserve an attitude toward them that 
will result in showing them forth for what they are, not 
for the things they falsely assume to be. Before the deep 
as well as true emotion can be portrayed, the accidental 
must be stripped away, 25 and when persons who have be- 
come sophisticated, over-refined, or corrupted to a false 
conception of men and life, — when such persons are to 
be presented as feeling true emotion, they must first be 
brought back ruthlessly to their primitive human nature. 
This can be accomplished only by subjecting them to the 
humanizing influence of events that strike with brutal 
primal directness at the roots of their pride, pretense, 

25 In such cases, the value of the " foil " — the character or situa- 
tion that offsets and contrasts with another — is great. The effect 
of presenting sham, convention, and pinchbeck emotion in contrast 
with the true emotion, is often tremendous. Consider the Maid of 
Orleans, in her sincerity and devout unselfishness a foil to all 
the court of France, and of England also. 



70 Short Stories in the Making 

prejudice, ignorance, and self-complacency. And to be 
able thus to discriminate between the true and the false, 
between perverted and fundamental human character, the 
author must devoutly have preserved himself from false 
culture, false refinement, false pride, and false wisdom 
— which is sophistication and black ignorance. To see 
and to understand all things in all men — this must be 
his aim and achievement. 

21. Yet truth compels the acknowledgment that an 
emotional appeal is sometimes made — at least with tem- 
porary success — by artificial stimuli, not by the legiti- 
mate method of reporting with accuracy the thing together 
with its natural accompaniment of subjective quality. It 
is possible to heap up pitiful details excessively — to portray 
emotion where none is present — to play on the feelings 
falsely — to get a burst of tears or a burst of laughter 
under " false pretenses." Bad practice, this, bad art, 
and bad artistic morals, the only temptation to which 
will perhaps be, the chance to sell to editors whose readers 
have a perverted taste and small artistic judgment. 
Whether 'tis better thus to sell, perchance to thrive, or to 
withstand the darts and slings of editorial rejections, 
keeping thereby one's artistic self-respect — that is the 
question. Let him who writes solve it, remembering that 
such editors do not represent all the market for literary 
wares; remembering, too, that the conscience too long 
accustomed to light behavior presently loses much of its 
sense of differences. Literary creativeness may fly out 
of the window when literary charlatanism comes in at 
the door. 



CHAPTER II 

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE PLOT 

XII. The Short Story Plot Much Resembles That 
of the One-Act Play 

1. The conte is a one-act play narrated, not acted. On 
the whole, this is so nearly true that we can take the 
play, especially the one-act play, as a guide to most of 
the short story principles that are dramatic, not narrative, 
in their essentials. The principles of dramatic plot are 
especially available. If not all of them can be appro- 
priated bodily by short story art, those that cannot be ap- 
propriated can nevertheless be profitably studied by it. 

2. What then are the essentials of a dramatic plot? 
They are : 

A. Persons acting. 

B. Persons acting in accordance with, or else (under 
the stress of conflict and situation) contrary to their 
previous character. 

C. Things happening or done (acts and incidents), 
these things constituting an interlocking series ending in 
a conclusive outcome. 

D. The things that are done resulting from the char- 
acter of the persons plus the situation (the sense of the 
word here is both general and specific). 

E. These things reacting on the persons in some such 
way as to seem likely to affect their future (especially 

71 



72 Short Stories in the Making 

as determined by their character. This will be shown in 
the outcome, in which the character will be seen either to 
persist unchanged after passage through a crisis, or else 
to have been altered in some respect as the result of pass- 
ing through the crisis). 

F. A set of conditions or influences, whether the re- 
sult of character or of circumstances, that affect the per- 
sons and are in opposition some to the others; this con- 
trary pull or push of influences rendering the outcome 
uncertain and thereby constituting the complication in the 
plot, this in turn creating the conflict and consequently 
the crisis. 

3. Again, regarding the plot as an interlocking series of 
events culminating in a definite outcome, we shall find in it 
these fundamental elements, or constructional materials: 

A. Motive, motivation: The reason, or causes, of the 
things happening or done. These causes will lie in char- 
acter, or in the circumstances, or (usually) in character 
and the circumstances reacting on each other. 

B. Action: The things that happen or are done — 
acts and incidents (see Sec. IX, 4) proceeding toward the 
outcome. 

C. Outcome: The fulfillment, or issue of the action 
under the influence of the motivating causes. 1 

4. Every plot must have a beginning, a middle, and an 

end; that is, the matters that precipitate the action, the 

progress and development of the action and situation, and 

the conclusive outcome of the action as this action is in- 

1 The technical term catastrophe is so often associated merely with 
tragedy and tragic outcome that it becomes confusing when used 
to designate outcomes that are not tragic. Denouement likewise is 
confusing and ambiguous. Therefore, the simpler term outcome is 
employed. 



Theoey and Peactice oe the Plot 73 

fluenced by the attendant circumstances. The beginning 
is that portion of the plot-facts which makes plain to us 
enough of the character traits and circumstances in- 
volved to enable us to understand the action. The end- 
ing is that part which brings the outcome and its conse- 
quences. The middle includes all the plot-facts not be- 
longing to the beginning or the end — the main course of 
action, the main body of incident and event, the main part 
of the characterization, and (usually) the main portion 
of the atmosphere effects. 

5. At this point we should make note of the difference 
between the order of events and incidents in the plot, as 
the plot is conceived to support the action and outcome 
(that is, as an abstract, or outline, of motivating causes 
and events), and the order of events and incidents as 
they may present themselves in the completed drama or 
story. In the plot abstract, everything must come in the 
natural order — cause before effect and motive before deed. 
Unless this order were followed, logical plotting would not 
be possible. But in the play or story that is built on the 
plot so conceived, this order is subject to free manipula- 
tion. The deed may be shown before its motive is re- 
vealed, the effect become apparent before its cause. This 
is here equivalent to saying that the opening of a play or 
story does not of necessity contain the material that 
actually constitutes the beginning of the plot, and that 
other variations also of the natural sequence may occur. 
This fact is mentioned at this time merely that the 
student shall not be left to think that the beginning of 
the story necessarily is identical in content with the be- 
ginning of the plot. Let us therefore return to con- 
sideration of the plot. 



74 Short Stories in the Making 

6. Technically, the plot consists of several divisions, 
representing stages of progress, namely: 

A. The exposition, or stage of introductory explana- 
tion. This ends with the exciting moment, or inciting 
impulse — the moment at which the complicating influences 
first appear and the conflict begins to reveal itself. 

B. The rising action, or critical period. This begins 
with the inciting impulse, or moment, and continues, often 
by successive stages of increasing power or intensity, to 
the decisive moment. This point — that at which the out- 
come is, by the progress of events, made now sure — 
should when possible coincide with the so-called grand 
climax, height, or climactic moment. The climactic mo- 
ment, as usually defined, is the moment when the sus- 
pense is greatest, and therefore the interest most tense ; it 
is frequently, though confusingly, termed the climax. 
But in truth the decisive moment, not the so-called height 
or grand climax, marks the end of the development and 
the beginning of the falling action; for this moment is 
that at which one certain outcome at last is made sure 
by the combined effect of events already past. Evidently, 
therefore, the most skillful plotting will be that in which 
the decisive moment, or height of the plot, likewise is the 
climactic moment, or height of the action — the point, that 
is, of greatest suspense and tensest interest. This does 
not, however, always happen; the height of the plot may 
not coincide with the height of the action, and therefore 
the grand climax may precede or follow the decisive mo- 
ment. It is more likely to follow than to precede. 2 

2 In tragedy, the decisive moment is also known as the tragic 
moment. With the decisive moment (when recognized immediately), 
" anticipatory delay " begins ; this continues until the outcome is 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 75 

C. The falling action. This part is that which fol- 
lows the decisive moment. - It can he regarded as the 
beginning and approach of the end. Frequent names for 
it are denouement, untangling, or resolution of the plot. 
We shall, however, be accurate enough and more com- 
prehensible if we call it merely that part which carries 
us on, as rapidly as may be, from the decisive moment to 
the outcome. It may contain the climactic situation; but 
when it does so, the interest of this situation will not in- 
frequently be found to depend on intensifying influences 
other than those of the bare plot. 

D. The outcome (also called by some denouement or 
catastrophe). In modern plotting, the tendency is more 
and more to telescope falling action and denouement into 
outcome, ending the action as quickly as possible after 
the decisive moment and the grand climax. Indeed, in 
the conte and the short play, " falling action " is often 
scarcely to be found. Instead, the decisive moment and 
the moment of grand climax practically include the out- 
come, or at least bring it immediately after them. Conclu- 
sions following the outcome are no longer found. 

1. For a good many pages now our attention will be 
occupied by discussion of plotting and the plot. In con- 
sidering this discussion, the student should bear in mind 
this caution : the word " plot " may and often does cover 
everything from a bare statement of the central thought, 
theme, or germ-idea of the plot, up to the completed story 
embodying the plot in its final and most finished form. 

reached. Within it comes often a point of " final suspense," at 
which the outcome, before assured, seems again to hang in the 
balance. In fact, the anticipatory delay may include a number 
of points of balanced suspense. 



76 Short Stories in the Making 

Perhaps this will be clearer if we say that the plot may 
present itself in various degrees of fullness. These de- 
grees of amplitude, or stages of amplification, may be 
listed roughly as follows: 

A. Plot germ (or " master plot"). A more or less 
general conception, or thought ; the first undeveloped form 
of an idea out of which may grow a true plot. In effect, 
it is a theme ; and if the figure of speech be continued, we 
can say that the first stage of development from the plot 
germ produces the plot embryo (see B here following) ; 
the material is no longer in plasmic form, but has been 
organized and limited enough to have its own distinct 
form and characteristics, and its own natural tendency to 
grow or develop in a certain definite direction. That is, 
the plot germ turned into a plot embryo produces the 
working-plot. The embryo is more commonly the first 
form in which the plot occurs to the writer's mind. (See 
Hawthorne's notebooks for many examples of germ and 
embryo. ) 

B. Working-plot, or plot embryo. In the working-plot, 
the germ thought has been developed enough so that it 
affords a clear epitome, or miniature, of the full plot as it 
will be when developed. It is the complete plot com- 
pacted into the fewest possible words. The working-plot 
represents the first stage in the evolution that is enough 
advanced to present the plot definitely as a whole, al- 
though only in miniature. 

C. Plot abstract or synopsis. The plot abstract gives 
us the working-plot enlarged into a skeletonized summary 
of the leading incidents and action. In the plot abstract 
the writer provides for the solution of all his serious 
problems of motivation. 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 77 

D. Scenario. A plot abstract amplified further, and 
rearranged to bring incidents, scenes, etc., into the order 
they will have in the completed story. Here the writer 
must adjust anything he finds amiss in the previous moti- 
vation; provide for the auxiliary and supplemental in- 
cident and situation and for any atmosphere materials not 
involved in his motivation of incident, action, and charac- 
ter; and in general, reconstruct and amplify until he has 
a very definite forecast of the story in its completed form. 
The scenario may be regarded as a thoroughgoing ab- 
stract of the story in its completed form. A scenario 
confined solely to plot elements (amplified synopsis) is 
known as an action-plot. 

E. Fulfilled plot. This is merely the amplified 
scenario, or completed story. 

8. The evolution of a plot, therefore, begins with the 
plot embryo (or the germ). Plot abstract and scenario 
represent the workman's devices for managing and 
subjecting his materials to his purpose. The fulfilled 
plot, or completed story, represents his skill as a workman 
in handling his materials and employing the devices of 
his trade, plus his innate literary ability. In reading 
the discussion that follows, the student will be helped by 
keeping these distinctions in mind, although the refer- 
ences are usually to plot abstract, and action-plot — the 
most important stages of plot construction. 

9. Examples of plot germ, working-plot, and plot ab- 
stract are here given: 

(1) Germ: Dishonorable conduct on the part of a 
son who lacks a sense of honor may crush a highly hon- 
orable father. 

(2) Working-plot, or embryo (the germ idea developed 



78 Short Stories in the Making 

into a more concrete conception) : Billings, lacking a 
sense of honor, by mispresenting facts induces his father 
to become surety on a bond for construction work that 
Billings fails to complete; and his father, scrupulously 
discharging the obligation, is ruined. [Another: Bill- 
ings, lacking a sense of honor, basely betrays an innocent 
girl, and his disgraceful conduct breaks his father's 
heart] 

(3) Plot abstract: Billings, an unscrupulous man, is 
a contractor, and bids upon an important piece of con- 
struction. To make certain of winning, he names too 
low a price and specifies terms obscurely under which he 
expects to " catch " the employing firm and recoup 
himself. But this firm is doubtful of him, and requires 
an iron-clad bond, which he cannot procure. In despera- 
tion he deceives his father about the facts and gets his 
signature to the bond. But Billings has to perform his 
contract under a competent and incorruptible inspector, 
and is therefore unable to work the tricks by which he 
expected to make his profits ; so that he finds himself with- 
out funds to complete the work and is ruined. His 
father, refusing to take advantage of technical defenses 
against his responsibility, sacrifices his own fortune in 
meeting his obligations under the bond, and is completely 
ruined. 

(4) Action-plot: This again would amplify the plot 
abstract, working out in detail the general action indi- 
cated in the abstract, and making any transpositions or 
inversions that seem desirable in the order of events. 

(5) Scenario: Would be the action-plot with the 
addition of the other necessary elements of the story in- 
dicated in compact form. 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 79 

XIII. The Exposition is the Introducing Part of 
the Plot 

1. Every plot has an outcome. This implies that 
there has, in the course of the action, been either a change 
or an imminent likelihood of change, from one state of 
things to another; the change either took place, or else 
it was averted. This in turn implies that, to understand 
this change and the manner in which it came about or 
was averted, we must know what the state of things was 
at the time when the action began. The purpose of the 
exposition in plot is, to make known this state of affairs 
from which there is to be a change, or in which (after 
a period of struggle or critical uncertainty) change is to 
be averted. That is, the function of the exposition is, to 
make the story clear by putting before us the facts that 
belong to the beginning of the plot. 

2. No one should take the term " exposition " to mean 
what is known technically in rhetoric as exposition, or 
infer that exposition, in the rhetorical sense, is the means 
finally to be employed in making the situation clear out 
of which the action has its rise. Formal exposition has 
no prominent part in any stage of dramatic or narrative 
writing. This part of the plot is expository only in the 
sense that through it is clearly explained the beginning 
state of affairs. But even in the plot abstract, its methods 
are not the methods of rhetorical exposition, and like the 
completed story, it depends, even in its condensed form, 
mainly on narration, dramatic action, and description. 
Certainly when the time comes to embody the intro- 
ductory facts of the exposition in the story itself, they 
are to be presented as far as possible through the words 



80 Short Stories in the Making 

and deeds of persons belonging to the story, and not 
through any formal explanation. 

3. In the exposition, great compression and economy 
of detail are to be observed. By economy of detail is 
meant the introduction of no more facts than are neces- 
sary to serve the purpose. This implies the careful in- 
spection of all the pertinent facts, to determine which 
are most serviceable and which can be set aside. For 
some facts will prove unnecessary, either because they 
indicate matters that are already sufficiently shown, or 
because they indicate matters that are not essential to a 
clear following of the story. The principle of economy 
of detail is important throughout narration, but it is es- 
pecially important in the exposition. For the exposition 
does not exist for its own sake, but merely as an aid to 
the understanding — an introduction to and initiation of 
the action; and its usefulness and interest cease as soon 
as it has brought the reader to the point where he can 
begin to follow the movement of the plot for himself. 

4. In the fulfilled plot, or completed story, distribu- 
tion of the detail closely follows economy of detail in 
importance. By distribution we refer to the gradual in- 
troduction of preliminary information as the narration 
proceeds. That all the information ultimately demanded 
by adequate exposition be introduced immediately when 
the story begins, is not necessary. The best results are 
likely to come from distributing this information through 
the story, some here and some there, as circumstances 
permit or demand. Nevertheless, in general principle, it 
should come as early as possible. Here it is necessary 
again to distinguish the order of the facts in the com- 
pleted story from their order in the plot abstract. In 



Theory and Practice op the Plot 81 

the plot abstract, the facts necessary to the exposition of 
course come at the first, and it is not until we begin the 
amplification of the plot abstract into scenario form that 
we face the problems of distribution. 

5. As the information constituting the exposition can 
be presented in various ways, such a distribution is more 
easy than it would be otherwise. The information can 
be given in direct statement by the author ; it can be em- 
bodied in descriptive passages; it can be presented in 
the course of conversation between persons in the story; 
and it can be suggested by acts and incidents forming 
part of the action itself. Therefore, when he has the 
expository information clearly in mind, the writer finds 
many opportunities of distributing it, as needed, through 
the narrative. That this method, when it is practicable, is 
the better, is obvious. An exhaustive outline of the situa- 
tion as a whole (whether this outline be introduced at 
the opening of the story or injected later on) is usually 
more mechanical and less pleasing than is an exposition 
skillfully scattered in inconspicuous places through the 
narrative. The distributed exposition does not attract 
attention to itself as such, but merges itself in the more 
important development of the story as a whole; nor does 
it interrupt or delay the action as the undistributed ex- 
position nearly always does. The explanation is realized 
without being perceived, and it so becomes more homoge- 
neously a part of the plot itself. 

6. We well may emphasize the superiority of the dis- 
tributed exposition in bringing on the action more 
promptly. So far as narrative or dramatic interest is 
concerned, the story does not really begin until the de- 
velopment, or " movement," of the plot begins ; all before 



82 Short Stories in the Making 

this is nothing but prelude and make-ready. To hold bach 
the reader longer than is necessary from the course of 
events in which his interest will find its source if he be- 
come interested at all, is poor artistry. To bring him as 
quickly as possible to the real stuff and business of the 
story is the aim of the skilled artist. A large proportion 
of the most successful stories open therefore with some- 
thing vital to the plot itself, leaving the expository matter 
for introduction later on. Frequently the necessary ex- 
position can be embodied naturally in the early speeches 
of the persons. This method is especially dramatic and 
effective. That by thus distributing this information the 
writer can usually clear the way for an immediate plunge 
into the business of the story itself, is sufficient evidence 
of the value of the distributed exposition. 

7. Yet the general superiority of the distributed ex- 
position does not imply that the distributed exposition is 
always to be preferred. A massed exposition may be 
better in particular instances. The nature of the ma- 
terial to be handled, the purpose of the author in telling 
the story, the mood or tone which he decides upon for the 
narrative, and the method of development which he adopts 
— any of these may make the massed exposition prefer- 
able or necessary. An illustration is afforded by one type 
of structure in the contrast story, namely, that in which 
the effect aimed at is produced by the difference between 
conditions as they are at the beginning of the story and 
as they are at the time of the outcome. True, distribu- 
tion of the expository matter may prove as advantageous 
in the contrast story as in any other kind, for the intro- 
duction of the successive portions serves constantly to 
renew the suggestion of contrast. But the writer may 






Theory and Practice of the Plot 83 

prefer to set off the contrasted facts in two distinct 
groups, one balancing the other. He then unhesitatingly 
employs the massed exposition. 

8. Somewhat of this type is Kichard Harding Davis's 
" A Question of Latitude " (in Once Upon a Time, Scrib- 
ner). In this story, the influence of tropical African life 
is shown upon the morals and tastes of a Boston gentle- 
man. The larger part of the story is consumed in making 
evident the nature, the savage brutality and vileness of 
barbarian tropical existence; against which portrayal is 
balanced that part of the story in which the Boston gen- 
tleman is seen succumbing to these debasing influences. 
If we wish, we may object that part of this exposition is 
not exposition at all, but development, intensification, and 
atmosphere creation. Even so, however, the utility and 
effect of the massed exposition when used fitly can be 
plainly seen in Mr. Davis's story. 

9. A review of these considerations reveals the fol- 
lowing chief facts about exposition as a plot factor : First, 
it is essential to an understanding of the outcome in all 
instances except those in which character, motive, and 
action completely explain themselves without preliminary 
exposition (that is, it gives us the beginnings). Second, 
the greatest compression and economy of detail are neces- 
sary in presenting the exposition, for the sole justification 
of the exposition is its service in making clear the story 
proper, and it must not usurp space or interest. Third, 
severe testing of all the information admitted is necessary, 
to avoid the introduction of matter that is impertinent or 
redundant. Fourth, in the fulfilled plot, distribution of 
expository matter through the story is usually preferable, 
because this enables the writer to enter quickly on the 



84 Short Stories m the Making 

action of the story itself, and causes the exposition to 
merge more homogeneously in the narration; but the 
question of preferring the distributed to the massed ex- 
position must be answered by considering the nature of 
the material, the general plan of presentation, and the 
purpose of the writer. Finally, the test of a good exposi- 
tion is, sufficient but not superfluous explanation of con- 
ditions, especially at the beginning of the action, and 
thorough merging of this material into the story itself. 

10. A list of the matters, some or all of which must 
be known in order to follow the plot understandingly, 
would be useful, but detailed enumeration is impossible. 
No one can foresee all the combinations open to the writer 
when his imagination begins to deal with the limitless 
mass of material at his command. Some suggestions, 
nevertheless, are given. It will be noticed that all the 
items in such a list will be peculiar items — that is, they 
will name details peculiar to the one particular plot, theme, 
character, or atmosphere. Such matters as are common to 
all situations or are naturally assumed because they are 
characteristic accompaniments of the situation developed 
by the story, call for no explanation. Information that is 
general property needs no exposition. 

11. Expository information that the writer may need 
to mention includes: — 

A. Particular character traits that affect the plot (e.g., 
that a man is a woman-hater ; that a perfectly honest wife 
has the habit of flirting, etc). 

B. Particular situations that affect the plot (e.g., that 
a broker is bankrupt, although his wife does not suspect 
it; that the maid is in love with the master; that the 
convict is an innocent man ; that the girl has inclosed the 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 85 

wrong letters in writing to her two lovers at the same 
time, etc.). 

C. Names of the persons, with or without further in- 
formation at the moment (but at least a swift characteriz- 
ing touch is desirable). 

D. Occupation or station in life (is the hero a black- 
smith, a lawyer, a book-keeper? rich or poor? etc.). 

E. Personal facts — peculiarities, mannerisms, age, 
tastes, etc., as far as these things are necessary to the 
characterization or important to the action, theme, or 
atmosphere. 

P. Time, place, setting, and other elements of environ- 
ment. 

G. Any other items necessary to the comprehension of 
motive, complication, character, theme, action, atmosphere, 
situation, outcome, or to the final effect. 

XIV. The Exciting Moment, or Inciting Impulse, 
Begins the Development 

1. The exposition represents the status quo, the exist- 
ing state of things, at the beginning of the action. 3 The 
moment this existing state of affairs, this status quo, 
is threatened with change, that moment the action — the 
movement, or development — of the plot begins. Something 
has happened or been done that threatens to produce, or 
actually produces, change ; 4 matters are not as they were ; 
a new condition or influence has thrust itself in, and this 

8 The reader is cautioned to remember that the order of events 
in the plot abstract may not be their order in the completed story. 
We may now assume ourselves to be dealing with the action-plot, 

* This something we may call the generating circumstance.. 



86 Short Stories in the Making 

new element must either be overcome and got rid of, or 
else must be accepted and permitted to work its natural 
results. 

2. From this moment, therefore, a struggle will be 
going on — light or serious, tragic or humorous — between 
this new influence and things as they were. Presently 
this contest will rise, through a period of climax, to a 
moment of crisis ; then it will reach an outcome ; and with 
this the story ends. Until this influence appeared, there 
was no complication, no uncertainty, no question of out- 
come. In the colloquial phrase, " everything was perfectly 
simple," quite plain. But the appearance of the compli- 
cating, or opposing, or change-threatening influence, the 
complication, brought on uncertainty, debate, struggle — 
that is, the conflict. 

3. Now the moment at which the status quo in which 
affairs were shown to us by the exposition, was brought 
to an end by the appearance of this complication, is known 
as the exciting moment; and the complicating influence, no 
matter what it be, is known as the inciting or exciting force 
or impulse. Evidently no action, and therefore no dra- 
matic effect, is possible before the inciting force is intro- 
duced. When the exciting impulse shows itself — again 
using the popular phrase — things begin to move ; and with 
the beginning of movement in the plot begins the true 
development of the story. 

4. We may now ask, what sort of thing can supply 
this inciting force, thus complicating a simple situation 
and commencing a conflict ? Theoretically, anything 
which in the experience of man has shown itself able to 
produce change in his affairs, either directly or indirectly, 
immediately or remotely, is available as a means of 



Theory and Practice op the Plot 87 

complication. But technical, artistic, and practical con- 
siderations limit this range of choice of complicating 
influence. 

5. It is desirable, for instance, that the conflict seem 
to spring from causes that are natural and even inevitable, 
and that the complicating facts fit the situation, agreeing 
with the persons, their character, their environment. That 
is, it must be natural and congruous. This is especially 
necessary for the generating circumstance. If either this, 
or the complication it introduces, be merely accidental, it is 
likely to seem improbable. If it be evidently manufact- 
ured, or be something " lugged in " or forced into the 
situation, it will seem artificial and untrue. To illustrate : 
It is not common for girls in the ranks of ordinary life 
to meet young noblemen; therefore when Annie, the 
daughter of the shoestore man, engaged to John the young, 
thriving, but, of course, bourgeois grocer, meets the prince 
of Schwindlermgut, who immediately begins to crowd 
John in the rivalry for her hand, we feel that the complica- 
tion is unnatural and forced. As a consequence, all the 
story seems untrue. But if instead of its being a prince 
who attracts Annie, it is Mike, the young plumber and 
hardware dealer, we do not have to gulp very hard to 
swallow the complication. Things like that do happen; 
they are natural; and there is no incongruity about them 
such as there is in the courtship of a common and com- 
monplace girl by a prince. 

6. Accidental complication is of two sorts: those com- 
plications arising from the ordinary chances and mis- 
chances of existence, and those arising from accident in 
the stronger sense of the term — a happening that is unusual 
and extreme. Extreme accident is illustrated by the 



SB Short Stories ik the Making 

following: The wife of a paper manufacturer, happening 
to pick up, when visiting his mill, a sheet of paper from 
the waste about to be ground up for new pulp, finds it to 
be a love letter written to her, but never mailed, by her 
husband's trusted friend. By this she is led to fall in love 
with this friend. Now such a discovery as that of the 
letter is possible, but so extremely accidental as to seem 
improbable. Only the remotest chance is involved; and 
if we accept the rest of the story, we can do so only by 
agreeing with ourselves to overlook the improbability that 
underlies the motivation at the outset. And this is hard 
to do; for the complication is vital to the story, and the 
generating circumstance must be convincing. It must 
seem natural and true to life. The inciting impulse and 
generating circumstance must seem more than merely 
adequate to produce the result that follows; they must 
seem true to the prevailing (not the exceptional) facts 
of human experience. 

7. The other sort of accident is that which constitutes 
the class of merely ordinary haps and mishaps — the kind 
common to everyday experience, occurring all the year 
round. Such occurrences seem probable rather than im- 
probable, they commonly bring no particularly significant 
consequences, and we instinctively class them with the 
ordinary events of existence; they soon cease to have 
meaning or distinction for us. Hence they are likely, 
when introduced as the inciting force or motivation, or the 
generating circumstance, to seem inadequate or to fail in 
impressiveness. This is why complications introduced 
by such accidents as sprained ankles, swimming mishaps, 
capsized boats, broken legs, runaways, fires, railway 
wrecks, sudden illnesses, and the like, usually lack the 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 89 

quality of " convincingness " and make the stories fall 
flat. It is perfectly true that any one of such accidents 
may, if properly managed, constitute a thoroughly good 
complication. 5 Such is the complicating event in De 
Maupassant's A Piece of String. A pocket-book has been 
lost, a miserly old man picking up a bit of string alongside 
the path is believed to have found it, and from these 
simple happenings develops a series of incidents realisti- 
cally tragic in their outcome. 

8. Prom what precedes, it is evident that exciting 6 
moment, or inciting impulse, involves two things: the 
complication itself, and the discovery of the complication. 
" Discovery," like " exciting force," is a technical term. 
It indicates the revelation of the existence of a complicat- 
ing influence, the discovery taking place at the moment 
when the reader (not necessarily the person or persons 
affected by it in the story) becomes aware that this 
complicating influence exists. 7 So far as the impression 
is concerned which the story, at least for the moment, will 
make upon the reader, the discovery is as important as is 
the complication revealed by it. And both are subject 
to the same requirements. 

6 This is much more the case in realistic than in romantic treat- 
ment. Unfortunately, the novice in writing usually attempts to 
use these accidents as motivating incidents in — supposedly — romantic 
stories. 

* The student will have observed that " exciting " has the sense 
of "being the causal force that arouses to action." In this sense, 
tickling excites laughter. Excitement, in the sense of tumultuous 
or highly-wrought feelings, may be quite absent at the moment 
when the exciting force begins to act. 

7 " Discovery " is like many other technical terms in having two 
meanings. Thus, it often means the revelation of a hidden identity, 
or similar plot fact, at some crisis in the drama or story. 



90 Short Stories in the Making 

9. These requirements we may sum up in the word 
plausibility. Discovery and complication must each strike 
us with belief; and complete plausibility exists only when 
we accept them without any shade of feeling that they 
may be open to doubt. Yet plausibility is possible with- 
out truth, and our complications (even more than the 
discovery of them) should be able to stand the closest 
critical examination if the reader chance to question them. 
The writer, of course, makes a thorough test of them in 
deciding upon his plot. 

10. Plausibility of the sort that can stand a thorough 
test is the result of consistency. Consistency, however, 
must not be regarded as essential merely at the moment 
when the complication is revealed. It is essential in every 
part of the plot, in every incident, every person, every act, 
every motive, and every particidar of environment. 8 In- 
consistency in any part or element of the completed story, 
no matter how small the part or subordinate the element, is 
a blemish and a fault. And as the complication is one of 
the most important elements of the plot, inconsistency in 
the complication is fatal; it falsifies the basic conception 
and therefore falsifies the story as a whole. 

11. Wherein, then, does plausibility lie? We have 
already seen. First, the generating circumstance, the dis- 
covery, and the complication (like all other elements of 
the story) must be consistent with the prevailing experience 
of the race. That is, they must reasonably be believable 
when considered (a) in the light of human nature and 
mind, and (b) in the light of the laws of nature and the 
conditions of social existence. Anything that violates 

8 The assertions about consistency are just as applicable con- 
cerning congruity. Congruity is, indeed, one element of consistency. 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 91 

human experience concerning the way in which the mind 
works, or the motives from which men act, or the laws of 
nature by which the material world in which they live is 
governed, or the social conditions surrounding them, is an 
inconsistency so serious as to invalidate any plot and any 
story. 

12. This does not mean that myth, legend, fairy story, 
burlesque, are illegitimate forms of narrative. For it is 
quite consistent with the working of the human mind to 
create such conceptions, and even the grossly impossible 
is allowable when it is presented, not as factual truth, 
but (as in the fairy tale) as an idealization of or a 
recognized departure from the truth, or (as in the bur- 
lesque) a commentary on the truth. 

13. This fact brings us to a secondary form of consist- 
ency, the principle of which may be thus stated: The 
main conception having been decided on, and being a 
conception that is consistent with human experience and 
human viewpoint, we must in working out the story itself 
introduce no element that is inconsistent with our main 
conception. Hard fact is likely to violate the consistency 
of the fairy tale ; episodes of romantic adventure but poorly 
fit the realistic story; a complication arising from some 
high ethical ideal assumed to exist in the mind of a 
jungle warrior is untrue to human experience; the cook 
lady who discards her footman lover because he eats with 
his knife, is in obvious disagreement with the standards 
of manners in her class. The scholar does not say " ain't," 
the gunman seldom discourses philosophically, the back- 
woods girl does not wear high-heeled pumps or pannier 
skirts except upon the stage, the machine-gun is not good 
material for a story of black art, and florid language does 



92 Shoet Stories in the Making 

not agree with a simple, heartfelt theme. There is a 
seemliness of minor consistency as important as is con- 
sistency in the basic conception. 

14. It is evident, therefore, that the generating cir- 
cumstance, the complication, and the discovery — the plot- 
facts belonging to the exciting moment — must be con- 
sistent with experience and ivith the rest of the story; 
that they must be thus consistent in order that they and 
the story of which they are a part shall be plausible; and 
that plausibility is necessary in order that the story shall 
have the vitally important quality of true-seeming, or 
verisimilitude. Without verisimilitude, the story had 
better not exist ; and verisimilitude is produced only by the 
consistency that results from fundamental truthfulness 
in the presentation of man and nature, and the exclusion 
of all incongruous detail. 

XV. The Kising- Action Develops the Plot to its 
Decisive Moment 

1. The moment the discovery has advanced far 
enough so that the reader senses a complication, even 
though this complication be as yet incompletely revealed, 
that moment the story begins to move; the action is on. And 
from that moment, it must advance. If there are lulls, 
they must be but temporary, and must end with a new 
and considerable advance. Moreover, the plot, the action 
— indeed, all the story — must not merely advance ; it must 
advance with rising interest. Onward and upward is the 
motto: onward for the development, upward for the 
interest. Until the climactic moment, or height of in- 
tensity is reached, this rule is imperative. And interest in 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 93 

the thoroughly effective story, continues and may even in- 
crease after the plot-action, Jiaving reached its decisive 
point, begins to drop off to the conclusion. 

2. The rising action, then, includes all the development 
of the plot that begins with the first hint of the complica- 
tion and continues until it completes itself in the decisive 
moment. (We have seen that the climactic moment is 
usually found at the close of the development, or rising 
action, included in or closely associated with the decisive 
moment.) The importance of the decisive moment calls 
now for consideration. 

3. Plot depends upon conflict — the push and pull of 
opposing influences that threaten to change, and attempt 
to thwart the threatened change, in the state of things as 
in the exposition they were shown to be. Out of this 
conflict springs the action ; in the end, the action brings the 
outcome"; and, therefore, somewhere in the course of the 
action, a moment has to come when one set of influences 
gains such an advantage over the other set that the 
prevailing set cannot fail, in the long run, to triumph. 
This is the decisive moment. 

4. True, the struggle does not necessarily end at this 
moment ; for a while at least it is likely to continue. In- 
deed, there may come another time (perhaps even a second, 
found in the falling action) when the outcome seems again 
uncertain. Moreover, the reader may, at the time, not 
realize that the decisive moment has been reached (see 
" His Bubble Reputation," Adventure, December, 1913). 
But when the action is complete — when the height has been 
passed and the outcome at last is known — then he can look 
back and say, " It was there that the outcome was settled ; 
after that, no other result was possible. There was the 



94 Short Stories in the Making 

moment in which was decided all that followed." (The 
most obvious examples are the surprise stories.) 

5. Now let us draw our conclusions from these facts. 
The decisive moment is the turning point of the plot (we 
are to remember that it had best coincide with, or at least 
closely precede, the climactic height). All that precedes it, 
leads up to it and makes it possible; all that follows it 
flows from it directly toward the outcome. Therefore, the 
construction of the plot throughout the stage of rising 
action — the choice of incidents, the characterization, the 
indication of environment, the motiving, all in short that 
is involved in developing the story to a point where its 
outcome is made inevitable — must be managed with a 
view to creating this decisive confluence of causes. This 
moment, this concurrence of character, motive, environ- 
ment, and act, is the first main goal of the constructive 
mind in the process of building up the plot. 9 The aim 
of the writer must be, throughout the developing stage, to 
make all the elements of his plot so converge that this 
moment shall be in truth and necessity decisive. Success 
in plotting lies much, if not mainly, in this subordination 
of the story materials to the production of this moment. 
Upon this will depend the plausibility and strength of 
the climactic height. 

6. We naturally ask now how to proceed in order thus 
to subordinate the material of the story to the production 
of a decisive moment; but the question is of that sort 
which can scarcely be answered in full. To do so would 
involve a complete exposition of the management of 
description, incident, and action, atmosphere, and 

• But in building up the complete story, the climactic height 
is the goal. 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 95 

characterization, for all these may happen to be employed 
in creating a state of affairs to which there can be but 
one outcome. Our discussion of plot development (rising 
action) leads to frequent incidental mention of all these, 
as accessories and aids to plot growth, but only one of 
them is primarily important to plot development, This 
one is incident. For the 'plot, as the necessary framework 
of every conte, is a group of acts, incidents, or events, 
springing out of and leading up to one another, and 
collectively producing the outcome. So far as the theory 
of plot is concerned, therefore, the developing element 
of chief importance is incident — the acts and events con- 
stituting the true plot-action. Hence at this point our 
study must concern principally the management of inci- 
dent. 

7. Plot development, then, consists in the management 
of a set of acts, incidents, or events, in such a way that 
presently they will make one particular result sure and, 
consequently, another contrary result impossible. But 
what do we mean by management % 

8. First and most important, we mean combining the 
acts, incidents, and events, into an interlocking group or 
series; so that each shall depend on one, several, or if 
possible all of the others, and so that a certain result shall 
flow from them, dependent upon them all collectively. The 
art of plot-building lies in this combining of incidents to 
produce sound motivation, leading to a conclusive outcome. 
After this, " management " means the successful presen- 
tation — by narration or other means — of the incidents 
individually; for much that is gained by good workman- 
ship in plot-building may be offset by inartistic or in- 
capable presentation. 



96 Shoet Stories in the Making 

9. In the combining of incidents so that they shall 
converge to a decisive moment — so that (putting it another 
way) their accumulating effects shall unify themselves in 
creating a situation which naturally terminates everything 
in a single definite outcome — the writer must attend with 
no small care to motiving and motivation. The two terms 
are coupled here because the attempt is sometimes made 
to employ them with distinct meanings, although it is 
not always clearly successful. 

10. Except in music, the word motive means, " exciting 
(or inciting), or responsible cause." In music, motive, 
or motif, is the theme and purpose of the composition. 
The word — preferably in its foreign form, motif — has 
been brought over into literary criticism with this special- 
ized meaning; so that to speak of the motif of a story 
is to speak of its basic theme and purpose, taken together. 
But motive in its common acceptation — not that of motif 
— means either, (a) the reason or object which leads a 
person to do a certain thing (" What was his motive 
for the murder?"), or (b) the set of causes out 
of which an act springs (" What was the motive for the 
murder ? ") 

11. The only difference, however, between (a) and 
(b) is this: in (a) the attention is fixed on the person 
who acts; in (b) attention is fixed on the act itself. In 
the one, we consider the responsible cause as it involves 
character; in the other, we consider the responsible cause 
as it affects the result. This difference indicates the 
distinction — if any can be drawn — between motiving and 
motivating. Motiving consists in providing good and 
sufficient cause for the behavior of the person; motivating 
consists in providing good and sufficient cause for conse- 



Theoey and Peactice of the Plot 97 

quences found in act and deed and in event. We motive 
acts in character. We motive incident and action by 
means of plausible causes of any sort. 

12. Adequate motivation, therefore, includes the con- 
sideration of motive and character, plus such other in- 
fluences as likewise determine action or create incident. 
The term is a technical term indicating the process by 
which the literary artisan builds action and incident out 
of the materials of environment, character, and situation. 
As a matter of fact, however, the student is as likely to 
find the process indicated by the more limited term 
" motive " as by this more precise designation ; for motive 
is always very prominent in motivation. The important 
thing for him to remember is, that character, act, and inr 
cident — each and all — must be rooted deeply in adequate 
cause. 

13. How he shall motivate the incident of his plot is a 
matter that must be left to the story-teller to work out 
anew with every story ; for every plot is a new conception, 
and brings its own problems of construction and manage- 
ment. Its characters, its atmosphere, its incident, its ac- 
tion, and the detail wherein each of these is embodied, are 
distinct from those of every other plot. They are peculiar 
to this one conception, and the combining of them con- 
sistently and effectively is a work that depends for its 
success solely upon the constructive ability of the writer 
and the skill he has acquired through practice. 

14. Yet a few hints can be given. Por instance, the 
" row-of -bricks " ordering of incidents is usually less nat- 
ural and less satisfying in results than is the " dissected 
picture " method of combination. By " row-of -bricks " 
is meant the plotting of the incidents in a series, the first 



98 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

of which results in the second, the second producing the 
third, the third the fourth, and so on, as one brick in a 
row, falling, knocks down the one next it, and so begins 
a movement that knocks down all the row one by one. 
But by " dissected picture " method is meant the dove- 
tailing, or interlocking, of each incident with various 
others, until all are fitted into place and at last — and only 
then, with the completion of the most skillful combination 
— the problem of the conflict shows itself solved. 

15. An example of the chain-of-sausages, or row-of- 
bricks, plot will be found among those given in Section 
III. The weakness of this style of plot is twofold. In the 
first place, it is not as consistent with the usual order of 
events as is the plot of interdependent incident, because 
in the natural order of things, especially in human activi- 
ties, many separate influences co-operate at the same time 
in the production of any particular result. Act and deed 
and event are not the result of a mere succession, a 
single string, of causes. They are the result of an inter- 
woven and inter operative group of causes. These indeed 
are often so intricate and complex in their influence upon 
one another, and so inextricably interactive in producing 
any definite outcome, that the writer has to pick and 
choose among them in order that his plot shall not itself be 
inextricably complex and confused. The bringing on of 
a decisive moment depends upon this selection, or choice 
and rejection, of possible material. Good workmanship 
in motivating, therefore, springs from (a) the skill with 
which a sufficient group of adequate interacting causes is 
chosen to produce a decisive set of conditions, but also 
from (b) the skill with which influences and causes that 
are not necessary to the production of this particular set 




Theory and Practice of the Plot 99 

of decisive conditions are discriminated from the necessary 
causes and resolutely excluded from the plot. In the light 
of these facts, the row-of bricks plot is seen clearly not to 
conform to the usual conditions of cause-and-effect in the 
actual world. 

16. The second weakness of string-of -beads motivation 
is, that it does not result in closely-woven plot — the essen- 
tial requisite of the conte. This form of plot is that which 
belongs rather to the tale than to the story intended to 
produce a single and dramatic effect. A mere succession 
of incidents can lead up to and terminate in a climactic 
incident capable of producing the single dramatic effect; 
but except in the most skillful hands it is much more likely 
to prove only what it is — a string of events. Even when 
the series closes with an incident greater in interest than 
is any of those that precede it, it is likely, nevertheless, 
not to prove a close-wrought plot. In the close-wrought 
plot, the decisive moment and the climactic height conse- 
quent upon it, depend on all the preceding incidents taken 
collectively , not successively. Altogether, therefore, the 
plot of interacting and interlocking incident is that 
which involves the most effective motivation ; and that it 
therefore calls for a higher constructive skill is nothing 
to its disparagement. 

17. Yet in one sense the incidents that are chosen 
because of their fitness collectively to produce a decisive 
moment resulting in an outcome of single dramatic effect, 
must, nevertheless, constitute a series. Their effect, it 
is true, is collective; but it is built up cumulatively. 
Therefore, they must succeed one another in a series of 
" movements " that produce constantly intensifying sub- 
effects. Incident B ought not to fall below incident A in 



100 Short Stories in the Making 

individual interest, and at least in theory should surpass 
it. Incident C must carry to a higher point the interest 
of incident A + incident B ; and incident D must not only 
be as interesting in itself as incidents A, B, and G 
individually, but must also, in combination with them, 
carry on the interest to a still higher point. Figuratively, 
the incidents resemble the ingredients of gunpowder; 
taken separately, they have merely their individual efficacy 
and force, but combined they have a force far in excess 
of the mere sum of their individual potencies. 

18. So from incident to incident (whatever the order 
be in which the events are ultimately introduced) , the 
uncertainty of the conflict, the force of the situation, the 
charm of the atmosphere, the power or attraction of the 
character traits, must not only continue, but grow. Unless 
in this sense the incidents constitute a series, the holding 
power of the plot itself will fail. E"o reader reads a story 
that " drops off " as the action proceeds. The very 
terms " rising action," " development," " growth," used 
to describe this stage of the plot, imply rising interest, 
developing interest, growing interest, advancing interest. 
This result is essentially the object sought in dramatic 
plotting. The very aim and purpose of the close-wrought 
plot is, to produce and fulfill a rising interest. 

19. Yet in the struggle to make each incident of higher 
interest than the one before it, the inexperienced writer 
may easily fall into a serious fault — that of exaggerating, 
of over-straining for effect. Nor is the student to under- 
stand that the term " interest " is an absolute term, or 
that interest is synonymous with excitement, " strenuous " 
action or situation, or sensationalism in any form. It 
does not imply that, if incident A kills off a man for us, 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 101 

incident B must kill off two or else fail of interest; the 
increased interest of incident B may lie in its showing 
ns the murderer happily eating breakfast in the bosom 
of his admiring family. This mistake about the nature 
and quality of interest leads the writer to strive at any 
cost for increasing effect, and is as fatal as it is common. 
It produces an artificiality of plot and treatment that 
recklessly deserts nature and truth. Rather, interest must 
be measured by considering 10 the hind of story, the kind 
of situation, the sort of persons, the manner of incident 
employed, and the kind of outcome — all these together. 
The interest of the arrow-pierced target legs in Kipling's 
Cupid's Arrows is relatively as great as the interest of 
poor little Bisesa's chopped-off hands in the same author's 
Beyond the Pale, but it is of an entirely different kind and 
quality, and neither incident would for a moment be 
usable in the other of these two stories. 

20. All this amounts to saying that interest is a rela- 
tive fact only, and is to be measured, so far as the sequence 
of incidents is concerned, solely by the standards estab- 
lished by the particular story that is in the making. The 
most powerful incident in De Maupassant's The Necklace 
is practically nothing more than the brief sentence of 
dialogue in which Mme. Loisel learns that she has slaved 
ten years to replace a lost necklace the gems of which were 
nothing but paste. Further, the interest of any incident 
does not lie solely in itself. The plot interest of any 
incident lies in the significance of this incident in associa- 
tion with all Us companion incidents (as in that just cited 
from The Necklace). The incident is interesting either 
because (a) it carries forward to a new stage what has 
10 For suspense and interest, see XVIII. 



102 Short Stories in the Making 

already occurred, or (b) introduces new elements of com- 
plication, or (c) adds significant information to what we 
already have, or (d) introduces action that seems to offset 
preceding events, thus renewing or increasing uncertainty. 

21. This being true, we see that the most trivial hap- 
pening, the most commonplace act or remark, may become, 
as an element of pilot, vitally important and vitally 
interesting. From the point of view of plot, therefore, 
interest lies not so much in what the incident itself is as 
in what it stands for in the development of the plot. 
Thus, in Moonlight (De Maupassant) we are not deeply 
concerned in the beauty of the night as the woman-hating 
Abbe Marignan sees it; tens of thousands of men and 
women have seen and reveled in nights as fair. What 
makes it interesting is not this, but its effect upon the 
Abbe; for it touches an unsuspected spring of sympathy 
in him, reveals what to him is a new element in human 
life; and thus, transforming his conception of God and 
man, remodels his character. Moreover, through the story, 
De Maupassant presents a theme that cannot fail to inter- 
est many thoughtful persons, and from the theme too, the 
incident derives interest. 

22. Plainly, then, interest in any incident lies largely 
in its significance as a plot element " — in what it stands 
for or brings about in developing the action toward the 
outcome. But because, for plot purposes, the interest 
lies in the result more than in the incident, we are not to 

11 This assertion is somewhat lopsided. In character stories, 
interest will lie largely in the characterizing value the incident has; 
in atmosphere stories, in its power to suggest atmosphere; and 
so on, according to the purpose of the story. This fact should 
be carefully noted. See concentrative incident, etc., flfl 30-42. 



Theory and Peactice of the Plot 103 

suppose that incidents which in themselves are uninterest- 
ing, can be safely used. Quite the contrary. No material 
that is inherently tedious will become less tedious for 
serving as an exemplum or an argument. True, incidents 
that are not, of themselves, of any particular significance, 
can be effectively employed — but only when they become 
positively interesting through their relation to the rest of 
the plot events, and the best results are those that follow 
when incidents themselves of positive interest are employed 
to carry forward a plot that itself is interesting. In 
thus attempting, however, to estimate the positive or in- 
trinsic interest of any plot material, we are on very 
dangerous ground; for to one who has eyes to see, ears 
to hear, and power to understand, nothing is without 
significance, and what is trivial, trite, jejune or com- 
monplace in the hands of the incompetent is not so in 
the hands of a master. So long as any incident or act is 
true to the nature of things and is so used as in some way 
to advance the presentation of a conception that likewise 
is true to the nature of things, and that is important enough 
to deserve development, so long will that act or incident 
be interesting within the story. 

23. Reviewing, we recall that interlocking incident 
produces more effective plot than does row-of-bricks inci- 
dent; that interest must increase with the progressive 
appearance of the various incidents essential to the plot; 
that incidents are interesting, in their plot relations, not 
for intrinsic qualities, but for their significance as develop- 
ing elements in the action ; and that, with masterly insight 
and skillful handling, even the most commonplace matters 
become significant. We are now to see that the principle 
which prescribes a steady rise in interest with the develop- 



104 Short Stories in the Making 



merit of the plot, is subject to qualification. But this 
qualification, let the student note at once, is in no degree 
a modification of the fundamental rule that we have just 
been considering. 

24. The qualification mentioned is, indeed, nothing 
more than an explanation of conditions that arise when 
a more or less full or complex plot is to be carried to its 
decisive moment; for in such a plot there may be several 
interlocking groups of incident (movements; events), the 
groups having perhaps little plots, or chains of develop- 
ment, of their own. But here we must digress to say that 
subplot, or any excessive complexity of incident, is danger- 
ous in the conte. The mere space limitation of the story 
often makes adequate development of such a plot impossi- 
ble. Moreover, with an increase of complication and 
incident (involving more extensive characterization, more 
numerous persons and motives, more intricate motivation, 
a more inclusive setting — in short, a multiplicity of 
interest elements and materials), the one single, unified, 
simple effect of the dramatic story (conte) becomes 
increasingly difficult to produce. Often single effect be- 
comes impossible, and the narrative passes over from 
conte into novelet or novel. 

25. Yet the fact does remain that a certain amount of 
complexity of plot is possible, even to the extent of subplot. 
But these are occasional instances only, and development 
of subplot, and solution of the separate complications in 
them, must be possible with extreme simplicity of action 
and of detail. Only so will the narrative be preserved in 
the form of the conte. Keeping now in mind this 
important warning — that a complex plot, if given adequate 
development, may so increase the necessary amount of 



da 



Theoey and Practice of the Plot 105 

fictional material as to render singleness of dramatic effect 
impossible — we may return to our explanation. 

26. In the complex plot, we said, there may be several 
groups of incident. These groups fit together to make the 
complete plot, but each of them is developed to a consider- 
able degree separately. Now, the requirement that interest 
steadily increase applies to the management of these groups 
in the plot when the plot is considered as a whole, just 
as it applies to single incidents in the simpler plot. That 
is, as the development passes from one group to another, 
the interest must continue steadily to rise. At the close of 
the development of group B, it must be higher than it 
was at the close of the development of group A, and so on. 
Indeed, every group, in its relation to the plot as a whole, 
is practically equivalent to a single incident in a simple 
plot ; it produces an advance and a higher interest. 

27. So much is plain. But what happens when 
interest, following one group of incidents, or movement, 
through its individual course of development to its in- 
dividual climax, then finds itself suddenly at a stop unless 
it take up and follow through another group ? Does not 
this pause and turning back produce a break and a let- 
down in the interest? It does. And this is one reason 
why the subplot and the plot of complex incident is 
dangerous for short story (conte) purposes. The breaking 
of continuous interest at the points where one stage of 
development ends and the action turns back or changes in 
order to develop another stage, may destroy the reader's 
feeling of unity, of totality, of singleness of interest, of 
material, and of outcome. If it do so — good-by to the true 
short story effect. 

28. But, on the other hand, one group of incident may 



106 Short Stories in the Making 

be very closely wrought in with the next, 12 and the groups 
can perhaps be so promptly and simply developed that 
the break does not become serious. Then no harm is done. 
As one passes from one group to the next, he feels that 
he is actually moving forward in the story; before one 
group is fully developed, the development of another has 
been begun, and whatever gap there might be is already 
bridged across. In fact, the rising action may be, and 
often is, not an unbroken upward increase, but rather an 
increase by successive stages, or degrees. Interest rises 
through stage A to the climactic moment of that stage; 
then, still alert, it turns quickly to the incident of stage 
B. So far as this B group is concerned, it is not yet 
thoroughly aroused ; but even at the outset it is higher than 
it would be had it not been already excited by following 
through stage A; and it continues to increase until, when 
the climactic height of stage B is reached, it is as high 
as the effect of all the incidents in group B plus the 
held-over interest of stage A can raise it. That is, we may 
compare the grand climax of the whole plot to a mountain 
peak in the further and highest range of a mountain 
system. To reach the final peak, we must pass over 
several intervening ranges, with the valleys that lie be- 
tween. But every succeeding range is higher than the one 

12 Some of the technical devices for binding such groups together 
are: Having persons who take part in one set of incidents appear 
in the other set; making a happening of one set become the cause 
of something that happens in the other; carrying one set partly 
through, then breaking off to take up the other, returning later to 
the first once more; causing the two sets to take place at one 
and the same time — a fact indicated by time references as may 
be needed. So slight a thing as the occurrence of two events in the 
same place tends to bind them together. 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 107 

before it, and every succeeding valley is at a higher level 
than the last preceding valley; until the last valley is 
crossed and we attain the master summit. 

29. Thus from stage to stage the interest is kept alert, 
held over, and increased. If at the beginning of each new 
stage of development it drops back a little from the point 
where the height of the preceding stage left it, it drops back 
but a little, and it quickly rises higher still as the incidents 
of the present stage combine with those of the preceding 
stages. By a series of successive climaxes, therefore, each 
having a starting-point higher than did the one before it 
— by such a series of successive stages or movements, the 
development goes on and the interest rises. The decisive 
point is reached ; the grand climax is completed ; and the 
outcome either has been revealed already (at the climactic 
moment) or is just before us. The ranges have been 
crossed, the peak scaled. Interest has been conserved at 
every point, and has been made to grow steadily through 
every stage of the rising action. In the story of complex 
plot, as in the story of simple plot, the rule of intensifying 
interest has held. 13 

30. Before we pass to consideration of the next stage 
of the plot we must discuss, however, the function of the 
plot as the carrier of non-plot material. For often a con- 
siderable amount of story material must be introduced that 

18 Evidently, the opening of the different movements in such a 
story is a trying problem. On the one hand, these "valleys," or 
internodes and points of lowered interest, are plainly the place for 
introducing massed exposition, description, etc. But on the other 
hand, they are as plainly under the necessity of getting the new 
movement under way as promptly as possible, so that interest may 
not slacken. Here as elsewhere, the safer practice seems to be, to 
reduce accessory matter to a minimum. 



108 Short Stories in the Making 






is not plot material (in the strict sense of the term 
" plot "), but which is just as necessary to the success of 
the conte as is the plot itself, with its conclusive outcome. 

31. The plot, we must remember, no matter how slight 
or how inconspicuous it be, is always and ever the frame- 
work, the supporting skeleton of the story. The skeleton 
must be filled forth into a body. Therefore, as the frame- 
work of the story, the plot must provide, in some or all 
of its different divisions, opportunity for the adequate 
presentation of every element that enters into the final 
effect of the story. Somewhere, the plot must provide 
opportunity for presenting character, atmosphere, setting, 
situation, mood, emotion — all that enters into the com- 
pleted narrative and helps to make it a finished creation. 
Therefore, somewhere in the plot as finally organized 
there must be a place for every necessary passage of 
description and of dialogue, for every scene, act, situation, 
and incident essential to getting the needed story material 
before the reader. 

32. The inference from this is, that in both the rising 
and the falling action and either accompanied or not ac- 
companied by other story material, incidents may be 
introduced that are not vital to the plot, but that are, 
nevertheless, vital to the total effect of the presentation. 
Such incidents as are vital to the plot are known as plot 
incidents; and it is this kind of incident with which we 
are concerned throughout the present chapter. But here 
we must mention the so-called developing, or amplifying, 
material — a better designation for which is intensifying or 
concentrative material. A plot incident is one that cannot 
be omitted, or of which the essential character cannot be 
made different, without destroying the plot itself by re- 



Theory and Peactice of the Plot ■ 109 

moving its essential motivation, or else changing it so 
fundamentally that its outcome is thereby changed. 14 A. 
concentrative or intensifying incident, however, is one that 
can be omitted without fatally crippling the plot in its 
original form, or that can be changed or varied materially 
without producing thereby a different outcome. 

33. The purpose of the plot incident is, to achieve 
the outcome; the purpose of the intensifying, or concentra- 
tive, incident is, to center attention on significant facts 
of any sort, to concentrate in a limited space and time 
as much of typical action, characteristic trait, significant 
environment, and other elements of the desired effect, as it 
can pack in. By selecting elements and material that 
will go furthest toward producing the desired impression, 
and presenting this significant material in well-managed 
incident, the writer concentrates its force and intensifies 
through it the final effect of the story. 

34. We here speak primarily of incident as the means 
employed to present concentrative material; but we must 
fix in mind that intensifying material does not lie in act 
and incident only. Both character (expressed in acts), 
and atmosphere, in all their limitless variations, are inten- 
sifying material of the greatest value. Nor is incident the 
only means available for presenting these sources of con- 
centrated interest and interpretative fact. But this we 
need not discuss here. 

35. To distinguish or even to discriminate the plot 
incident from the amplifying, or concentrative incident, 
is difficult. In the best stories, plot incidents are likely 
to be the only incidents employed, the writer's gift ena- 

14 Such incidents will seldom occur in the plot until it has reached 

the synopsis stage of development. 



110 Short Stoeies in the Making 

bling him to conceive a plot so perfect, and to develop it 
with so sound judgment in the selection and command of 
material, that adequate presentation of the plot itself 
results in adequate presentation also of all other elements 
essential to the effect desired. Yet the introduction of 
incidents, and of other material, not to further the plot, 
but to emphasize some element that will contribute to 
the total effect, is frequent. In general, therefore, we 
say that 'plot incident may he (and should he) concentra- 
tive incident; that intensifying incident may he plot 
incident; and that either may shade off into or merge with 
incidents of the other class. (The term " incident " may 
here be interpreted to mean any material necessary to the 
intended effect of the story.) 

36. Brief illustration will show the nature of plot 
incident. The germ idea of our plot is this: A son, 
lacking a sense of honor, commits an act which ruins his 
father, the soul of honor. Considering how to develop a 
plot from this idea, we see that the ruin worked upon 
the father may be either material (financial) or psycho- 
logical ; the son may bankrupt his father or he may break 
his heart, or he may do the latter by first doing the 
former. We decide upon financial ruin. To ruin his 
father financially, the son must do some act or acts in- 
volving his father's fortune. Formulating a working-plot, 
we will assume that he is engaged in contracting, and that 
to secure an important contract he offers a bond signed by 
his father under a misapprehension. Unable to carry out 
his agreement (as he knew he might be), he forfeits 
the bond, the payment of which ruins the old man. 

37. In this transaction we have a plot incident; that 
is, an incident indispensably a part of the series that brings 



. 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 111 

about the predetermined outcome. After the working- 
plot has been decided on, a plot incident cannot be 
materially changed, since to change it would materially 
alter the action or the outcome. Prom the plot 
germ stated above, various working-plots might have 
been developed (as is true of any master-plot or plot 
germ). Billings (the son) might have forged his father's 
name to a crushing obligation; he might have compelled 
him to meet ruinous gambling debts; he might have 
cornered and taken advantage of him in some " deal " ; 
and in numerous other ways, he might have brought him 
to bankruptcy. In each of these working-plots, the inci- 
dent employed — the forgery, the gambling payment, etc. 
■ — would have then been a plot incident, and would have 
been indispensable to the development of that particular 
working-plot. We may, therefore, define a plot incident 
as any incident that is indispensable as a motivating step 
toward the production of the outcome required by the 
working-plot adopted. 

38. JSTow let us change the character of the outcome, 
and state another working-plot to match. Billings is to 
break his father's heart, not merely his finances. To do 
this, his acts must strike at the old man's sense of honor, 
not at his fortune. What the son does must be of a sort 
so conclusively and crushingly dishonorable that the father 
shall feel himself and all he holds dear involved in the 
dishonor of the son. The son may, for instance, betray 
for a price the secrets trusted to him of a great cause to 
which his father and his father's friends have devoted life 
and fortune. This betrayal, like the bond transaction, 
is a plot incident — an incident that is an indispensable 
part of the series intended to produce the outcome. True, 



112 Shoet Stories in the Making 

any other incident of a sort permitting it to be similarly 
employed to bring about the same outcome — the breaking 
of the father's heart — could be used as a plot incident 
suitable to this plot, provided it were equally forceful, 
vivid, and natural, and in general offered equal dramatic, 
theatric, and narrative advantages. Thus, base behavior 
on the son's part in the betrayal of an innocent woman 
might as completely crush the father. But the working- 
plot would not then be the same; a new and different 
working-plot would have been created. 

39. Such are plot incidents — incidents indispensably 
a part of the particular series meant to bring about the 
outcome. But amplifying or intensifying materials may 
be selected much more freely than may strictly plot 
materials. Amplifying incidents are not necessarily 
part of the causative series indispensable to the predeter- 
mined outcome ; they may only concentrate attention upon 
some fact, or quality, or emotion, that will directly or 
indirectly, but surely, contribute to the intended final 
effect. So to contribute, they must be adapted to awaken 
immediate response in the reader, and must be in keeping 
with the story as a whole; for incongruous material is 
always to be shunned absolutely. Any material, therefore, 
that is in keeping with the plot, the setting, the tone of the 
narrative, and the character of the persons, may he intro- 
duced into the story for the purpose of heightening its 
effect; provided that this material be so managed that it 
do not interfere with the progress of the plot. For, how- 
ever effective it may be toward intensifying desired effects, 
if it, nevertheless, occupy too prominent a place or require 
too extended treatment in proportion to other parts of the 
story; if it attract attention to itself, to the obscuring of 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 113 

the main theme or plot; or if it otherwise cease to be 
frankly and solely subordinate and contributory, usurping 
on the contrary the attention due only to the main theme 
and plot; — then it must be subdued, or if this prove im- 
possible, must be resolutely rejected for some less stub- 
born material. 15 

40. Concentrative or intensifying passages abound, for 
intensification is freely employed to emphasize the sig- 
nificant facts of character, environment, atmosphere — of 
everything, indeed, involved in the total impression aimed 
at in the story. A single paragraph from The Outcasts of 
Poker Flat (Harte), although taken at random, sufficiently 
illustrates the nature of the concentrative incident. It 
reads : 

"... Mr. Oakhurst . . . had met him some 
months before over a l little game/ and had with perfect 
equanimity won the entire fortune — amounting to some 
forty dollars — of the guileless youth. After the game 
was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator 
behind the door and thus addressed him : ' Tom, you're a 
good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't 
try it over again.' He then handed him back his money, 
pushed him gently from the door, and so made a devoted 
slave of Tom Simson." 

41. This incident, or episode, has nothing to do with 
the outcome in any way. Its sole purpose is, to concentrate 
attention on and emphasize the character qualities of the 
two persons whom chance or fate has thrown together once 
more, this time to be partners in the tragic outcome of a 

15 We must concede, however, that some thoroughly successful 
short fiction owes its value to its contributory, not to its essential, 
elements. 



114 Short Stories in the Making 

series of events 16 unconnected in every way with their 
former meeting. Yet as a concentrative episode, this 
incident is so in keeping with the rest of the story, is so 
simply and skillfully managed, so natural and well-chosen 
from the great number of incidents that the author might 
have employed to the same end, so thoroughly kept sub- 
ordinate to the main facts, that the reader does not in the 
least feel its complete disconnectedness from the plot. 
As an example of skillful choice and skillful management 
of intensifying, or emphasizing, material, it will repay 
further study. 

42. The student will observe that the discussion just 
given to concentrative, intensifying, or emphasizing, in- 
cidents is somewhat a digression. It has, however, been 
introduced here for several reasons. First, it is desirable 
that the difference between plot incidents and non-plot 
incidents be fixed permanently in mind. Second, it is 
necessary that, here or elsewhere, attention be directed to 
the function of the plot as the carrier of non-plot material. 
Third, the stage of rising action, or development, is the 
stage in which plot incident most prominently occupies the 
writer at the time when he is constructing his plot; for 
although plot incident will be found in every stage of 
the plot from the moment when the complication first 
appears, it is in the rising action stage that the most 
skillful and careful management of it is required, in order 
to create the decisive moment. Without forgetting the 
importance of intensifying incident in the story when 
finally completed ; and realizing that this sort of incident, 
like plot incident, may occur in any part of the story, but 
is likely to be most prominent in the stage of exposition 
16 Let the student pick out the plot incidents in this story. 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 115 

and of the rising action ; — the beginner will, therefore, in 
constructing his plot, have to concern himself — prior to 
the scenario stage — with the creation and organization of 
plot incident only. 

XVI. The Falling Action Brings the Outcome 
and Close 

1. Broadly speaking, when the outcome has been made 
sure through the gaining, by one set of influences, of a 
permanent advantage over the other set, as determined by 
the decisive moment, the best thing thereafter is, for the 
action to bring on that outcome as rapidly and impressively 
as possible. For suspense continued and renewed, for ac- 
cumulating incident (either plot or concentrative), the 
place is rather before than after the decisive moment. 
The place for a regatta at Niagara is not in the falls, nor 
in the waters that have been caught in their rush. And 
the plot that has come to its decisive moment has been 
caught in the rush of the stream toward the falls. The 
end once determined, the outcome at last made sure, is 
to be reached and got over as quickly as may be; for if 
he wait too long, the reader loses interest. This considera- 
tion dictates the principle that is more and more showing 
itself in drama and dramatic narrative; namely, that 
falling action shall be reduced to the least possible 
amount. 17 

2. For this advice, there are two justifications: When 

17 Continuing the Niagara comparison, the decisive moment is that 
at which the waters are caught in the rush toward the falls, and 
the falling action is their sweep forward from that moment until 
they plunge over the precipice. 



116 Short Stories in the Making 

the outcome is made to coincide with the decisive moment 
and the climactic height, it is likely to gain greatly in 
effectiveness — the impression it makes is quicker, deeper, 
and stronger — that is, more theatric, in the best sense of 
the term. When their pull begins, the falls themselves — 
and the end of the story — are at hand. Such an ending 
materially strengthens the dramatic effect sought by the 
conte, and is nearly always characteristic of the closely- 
wrought plot. In addition to this, the omission of amplify- 
ing materials wherever they are unnecessary to the full 
development and effect, is in accordance with the general 
principle of compression, or economy of detail, that we 
have already mentioned, which prescribes: the fewest and 
simplest means with which the desired effect can be fully 
wrought. 

3. Inclusion of the outcome in the decisive moment is 
particularly advisable in stories which, in the course of 
the rising action, have made very plain what the results 
are that the conflict can produce. The reader, clearly per- 
ceiving the consequences of this or that turn of events at 
the height of the conflict, and watching with eager interest 
to see what this turn will be, knows as soon as he sees it 
what the outcome is. When the boat is just above the falls 
and the rope holding it breaks, the rest is sure. When the 
decisive turn takes place, the problem is solved. If the 
decisive turn reveals itself, the end of things is already 
clear to him; he understands this end; he realizes in ad- 
vance its grief or happiness, its comedy or tragedy. There- 
fore, he needs little or no falling action, untangling, or 
resolution, little or no separate presentation of an outcome 
already felt in its full force. We should have to qualify 
this assertion only as it affects one kind of story. When the 






Theory and Practice of the Plot 117 

effect sought is that which springs from contemplating 
the steady, sure approach of fate (usually tragic, although 
it may be comic), the proportions are reversed. The rising 
action is short, the decisive moment comes early, and the 
falling action is long drawn out. Naturally, in this kind 
of story, the climactic point is more or less widely 
separated from the decisive moment. 

4. In most stories having closely-wronght plot, there- 
fore, the decisive moment, the climactic situation, is itself 
the final, the conclusive situation; and to hitch on other 
incident or situation is to couple on an empty trailer 
behind the observation car. The trailer merely interferes 
with or spoils the view from the observation-platform, 
the decisive climax. In a story so plotted and managed 
that its decisive height embodies or unmistakably suggests 
the outcome, further scenes or situations after that of the 
decisive height are superfluous, and dilute and nullify 
the impressiveness of the plot culmination and climactic 
height. 

5. Nevertheless, well-built plots may not always permit 
this complete telescoping of decisive height and outcome. 
The decisive turn of events does not always make plain 
to the reader what the outcome is to be, but only which 
set of conflicting influences is to prevail. Indeed, some 
stories would fail of their effect (cf. par. 4), and some plots 
would refuse to yield themselves to development, if this 
rule were universal. The surprise story especially is likely 
to require further action after the decisive point has been 
reached ; for its essential characteristic is, the springing of 
an unexpected outcome brought about by a set of influences 
which only at the very last are seen to have combined 
decisively some time before. 



118 Shoet Stosies in the Making 

6. In stories likewise that emphasize character, espe- 
cially those that present character transformed as the result 
of the conflict depicted in the story, it may be necessary to 
carry on the action after the decisive moment; for what 
determines the outcome may merely draw this outcome 
in its train, not include it. The character facts may 
depend upon the influences which, at the decisive height 
of the plot, combine to one sure result, but the full working 
out of which may not yet have taken place. Therefore, 
to enable these influences fully to work out their results 
on the character they affect, additional incident and action 
may be necessary. Even the bare fact that verisimilitude 
often requires the impression of passage of time between 
cause and effect may make such additional incident and 
action advisable. Very often these considerations hold 
also when applied to the plot story. 

7. We must acknowledge, therefore, that although the 
telescoping of outcome with decisive moment is highly 
effective when it can be accomplished, not all plots will 
yield to it. Wholly legitimate conte plots may require 
further action, further incident and situation, to carry 
them forward from the point where the outcome is made 
sure to the point where this outcome is actually reached. 
The decisive moment is not always decisive except as we 
look back at it; and it often is not sufficient in itself to 
support the outcome unless reinforced by incident, action, 
or situation following it. In short, after the outcome has 
been made sure, it must still be brought to pass; and to 
bring it to pass, completely motivated, and at last to present 
it as conclusively the result of the whole plot, is the func- 
tion of that division of the plot termed the falling action. 
In other words, the falling action brings forward and con- 






Theoey and Peactice of the Plot 119 

summates what the rising action and decisive moment have 
made sure. 

8. Illustration of these explanations will make them 
clearer. In The Pope's Mule (Daudet), the plot has a 
clearly distinguishable stage of falling action, or resolution. 
The height of the plot 1S — that is, the decisive moment — 
comes when Vedene so maliciously conducts the favored 
mule to the top of the great tower, thus frightening and 
humiliating her greatly. From that time, but one outcome 
is possible: the mule will have her revenge. But the 
opportunity for it must be created, and the stage prepared 
for its actual accomplishment. Hence comes the addi- 
tional stage of the plot, wherein this outcome is prepared 
for. Seven years she waits her opportunity . Then 
Vedene, returning from long service away from Avignon, 
receives the appointment he has asked, and is taken to 
see the beloved mule whom he pretends so to admire. 
Only then has the outcome been sufficiently motivated; 
only then is the famous kick — the kick that she had been 
saving up for seven years — ready to be delivered — " a 
kick so terrible, so terrible, that even at Pamperigouste one 
could see the smoke ; a cloud of yellowish smoke in which 
fluttered an ibis plume, all that was left of the ill-fated 
Tistet Vedene." 

9. For the sake now of understanding what is meant 
by the uniting in one situation of decisive moment and 
outcome, let us tamper a little with Daudet's plot. The 
mischievous Vedene gets the poor mule to the top of the 
tower ; she brays forth her terror ; the humiliating process 
of rigging her into the cradle ready for lowering back to 

18 Remember that the height of the plot is not necessarily the 
climactic moment of the narrative. 



120 Short Stories in the Making 






earth has been completed. She stands waiting to be swung 
off. At this moment, not seven years later, Vedene comes 
within reach of her heels and receives her kick. In the 
very moment of her humiliation, she avenges herself. The 
plot is now closed, the action is complete, the story ended. 
In every respect (perhaps) except one, this management 
of the outcome is more effective than is that actually used, 
in which a period of falling action intervenes. But that 
one respect is exceedingly important : it is this long waiting 
that makes the kick really impressive. In the story as 
Daudet produced it, we gain, from the long years through 
which she kept it burning, an idea of the intensity of the 
mule's hatred ; in the plot of telescoped height-and-outcome, 
no such impression could have been created. The mule's 
kick in the telescoped version is the result only of sudden 
anger and passionate impulse. In this instance, then, the 
form with falling action gives us a longer and more satisfy- 
ing period of suspense, a deeper realization of mule charac- 
ter and motive, and a higher gratification at the ultimate 
success of the tremendous kick. 

10. Here falling action clearly has advantages; but 
such is not always the case. In MarJcheim (Stevenson) 
we have an excellent example of the story in which the 
turning-point and the outcome are telescoped. The turn- 
ing-point is that where Markheim's conscience succeeds in 
making him realize exactly what he has become and what 
— -except for a single possibility — he will always be (but 
increasingly worse as the years go on) . This point comes 
almost at the close of the story, and the closing lines of 
the story itself are virtually the closing lines of the para- 
graphs in which this climactic situation is developed. 
Markheim in effect says, " Well, if I cannot change for 



Theory and Practice of the Plot 121 

the better, I can at least prevent myself from growing 
worse in this terrible way " j and thereupon, going to the 
door, he throws it open to the servant and says, " You 
had better go for the police. I have killed your master." 
Thus his last act closes not only the decisive situation, but 
also the plot and the story. De Maupassant's The Coward 
presents a similar example. The decisive situation is 
that in which the viscount, shaken by fear and torn be- 
tween impulse and reason, mechanically picking up the 
dueling pistol, finds it loaded. Five sentences later, " he 
suddenly thrust the pistol into the very bottom of his 
throat and pulled the trigger." Three more sentences end 
the story itself — and these three are not needed. 

11. The question, whether to telescope or not to tele- 
scope, will therefore be answered automatically by the plot 
conception itself. According to the requirements of the 
plot as ultimately it dictates itself to the writer's construc- 
tive and artistic sense, falling action will or will not 
be called for. But when it is not called for, the plot and 
the story will be better without it. 



CHAPTER III 

THE COMPOSITIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF 
THE SHORT STORY 

XVII. The Opening Seizes Interest, Introduces 
Action, Strikes the Keynote, and (Perhaps) 
Conveys Exposition 

1. Up to this point we have considered, first, the dis- 
tinguishing characteristics that make, and second, the 
theory of plot as it affects, the short story ; and incidentally 
we have given attention to matters belonging rather to the 
story in the completed form than in its plot outline. Hav- 
ing treated these matters and emphasized the importance 
of dramatic plot to the true short story (conte), we can 
now devote our attention for a while not to questions of 
motivation — of cause and effect interacting through event 
and character toward a single impressive outcome — but to 
the compositional construction of the story — that as- 
sembling and manipulating of all its facts, materials, and 
parts which leave it (let us trust) a finished work. Our 
consideration will first be given to the opening of the 
story. The function of the opening is: 

A. To seize interest. This oftenest results from (B). 

B. To begin or bring on the action. 

C. To strike the keynote of the story. 

D. As far as may be expedient, to convey exposition. 

2. In discussing plot, we noted that plot sequence is 

123 



Compositional Constbuction 123 

not the same as narrative sequence, or dramatic sequence. 
The essential sequence of incident in the plot is, we saw, 
the time-sequence — cause before effect; the contributing 
facts before the situation and outcome they produce. But 
the natural sequential order may be altered and even quite 
reversed in the completed narrative, especially as the inci- 
dent not infrequently is more important for the facts that 
gather round and depend upon it than it is merely for it- 
self ; so that it is managed with a view to emphasizing 
these accompanying facts, and not the pure incident. We 
may even find the outcome at the beginning of the story, 
which then works backward to those facts which constitute 
the beginning of the plot. 1 This sort of disarrangement 
and relocation of incident and of other facts is often neces- 
sary for dramatic emphasis, which is the effect sought by 
the conte. 

3. For we are not to understand that such dislocation 
of facts from the natural time order is universal, nor that 
it is invariably necessary or expedient. The time order 
should in fact be varied no more than dramatic effective- 
ness requires. Yet this implies that the artist, in handling 
his materials, often must deal with them in ways that 
render the time order — so essential in the earlier processes 
of plotting — impossible in the story as it finally reaches 
the reader. For in that stage of composition in which 
the plot is transformed from a bare outline of incident 
into an artist's conception of the dramatic significance of 

1 This is in general the method of the mystery story. Beginning 
with a puzzling outcome, the mystery story carries the reader, but 
backward, through an explanation of the facts that explain this 
outcome. The circle is completed when the explanation brings the 
reader back at the close to the same outcome with its mystery 
removed. 



124 Short Stories in the Making 

these incidents together with all the facts of every sort 
involved in them in some significant hour of human life 
— in this stage of composition that order is the most 
logical which best shows forth this conception with a 
vividness and forcefulness likely to impress it deeply on 
the reader. We are to remember, therefore, that plot se- 
quence and narrative sequence are different things. Both 
order the same body of facts, but each orders them as re- 
quired by its peculiar function in the creating of the com- 
pleted story, the one seeking to make clear the history of a 
certain outcome, the other seeking to make clear the signifi- 
cance of this outcome and impress it on the reader. 

4. From what has been said, it follows that the begin- 
ning of the story itself may contain matter not found in 
the beginning of the plot, and that it may omit matter nec- 
essarily included in the beginning of the plot. 2 In other 
words, the beginning of the story may be different from the 
beginning of the plot. The opening of the story may — ■ 

A. Begin the action. 

B. Begin the characterization. 

C. Begin the creation of atmosphere, presenting either 
tonal, environmental, or merely setting elements. 

D. Begin the theme presentation. 

That is, the beginning of the story may concern itself with 
material especially suited to the purpose of any one of the 
four fundamental types of short story. Moreover, any one 
of these four types of beginning is likely to be usable in any 
one of the four sorts of story, although not all the types of 
beginning are equally suited to all the types of story. 

5. This means that in the whole range of the conte 
there are sixteen possible combinations of story emphasis 

2 Before the stage of scenario, or action-plot. 



Compositional Construction 125 

with beginning materials, although (of course) when the 
single story is in question the possible combinations are 
only four. In a character story, for example, the author 
can at the very opening begin his emphasis upon character, 
or he can open rather with materials that belong particu- 
larly to the action, or to the atmosphere, or to the theme. 
The natural and usually the best procedure will be, to 
make prominent in the beginning that element which will 
be most prominent in the completed story — a character 
story taking a beginning that emphasizes character, a 
theme story opening with emphasis on the theme, an action 
story with emphasis upon action, and an atmosphere story 
with emphasis upon atmosphere. This procedure, how- 
ever, although highly useful in many instances, and 
especially in " striking the keynote " of the story, is by 
no means always obligatory. 

6. Accepting the rhetorical theory that the beginning 
of any piece of writing is a place of great importance in the 
giving of emphasis, we are thus led to lay down the rule, 
subject to qualification, that the beginning of a story 
should always emphasize that one of the story elements 
which the story itself is intended to emphasize. But this 
is sound theory and good practice only when it is not 
overdone. We must not lose sight of everything but solely 
our intended effect; we must remember at the same time 
that this effect can be attained only through the skillful 
employment of various means, and that the organization 
of our story as a whole — the assembling of its materials, 
the ordering of its incidents, the working in and sub- 
ordinating of all the sub-effects essential to the production 
of the final effect — may call for numerous adjustments 
involving modification of general principles. The rules 



126 Short Stories in the Making 

of art are plastic, not rigid, and its materials resemble 
modeling clay rather than cast iron. Any one of many 
considerations may, therefore, warrant the disregard of 
the rule as first stated. Accordingly, the more practical 
and general rule is this : In the opening, use that material 
which will best contribute to the organization and effect 
of the story as a whole; remembering, however, that at 
the beginning it is desirable to emphasize, so far as practi- 
cable, the same elements as are to be especially emphasized 
in the story as a whole, 

7. We will now in a single clause emphasize the self- 
evident truth, that the opening must indispensably have 
interest, and turn to consider the story materials from 
this point of view. First of all, we observe that all four 
of the types enumerated above are beginnings likely to 
possess interest because of their inherent qualities. In- 
terest, we have already seen, is something quite different 
from excitement or avid pursuit of sensation, being the 
result of internal quality and of significance to the plot, 
rather than of external characteristic. It is roused when- 
ever anything is brought before the mind that by reason of 
its nature, its intrinsic qualities, or its relationship with 
other matters, has power to command attention; and the 
human mind is so constituted that it inclines to give 
attention whenever anything closely related either to 
human life or to the individual experience through which 
human life is realized, is presented to it, provided that 
this thing is so presented as to make its relationships and 
significance clear. 

8. Accordingly, men instinctively attend to that where- 
in the acts of other men, their traits of character, the con- 
ditions surrounding and influencing their lives, or a 



Compositional Constkuction 127 

conclusion concerning human existence, is presented. This 
is equivalent to saying that they instinctively give attention 
(or tend to do so) whenever action, character, atmosphere, 
or theme is brought before them. For these are things 
that of their very nature appeal to man as affecting his 
daily life, or entering into his experience of it, or throwing 
light on the problem of his own nature and destiny. 
Recognizing, therefore, the wide range of subject-matter 
which thus possesses inherent interest quality, we see that 
as a consequence each of the four types of opening is 
intrinsically suitable for the beginning. A propos this 
topic, more will be said in pars. 12 and 15-21. 

9. We next note that another function of the beginning 
is filled by these four types. This function is, to present, 
when essential to the narrative plan, and in other cases 
when reasonably practicable, all or part of the facts belong- 
ing to the plot exposition. Here we observe again that, as 
acts, character, environing conditions, and recognized 
truths of life are all we know of, seeming to bear upon 
human life, so they are all that can be made use of in 
any exposition. Accordingly, the matter of these begin- 
nings — acts, character, theme, and atmosphere — is the 
sole material out of which the exposition of any plot (or 
indeed any plot itself) can be built up. Recalling then 
the general principle, that the expository facts are best 
presented earlier rather than later in the narrative, we can 
lay down another rule of practice for the story writer: 
When the plan of narration permits it and the unified 
effect sought will not suffer by it, the details introduced 
at the opening of the story should be selected with a view 
to presenting the necessary exposition. 

10. This brings us to a third function of the opening; 



128 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

namely, striking the keynote of the story — a function 
of great importance. By " striking the keynote " we 
mean, creating a sense of the essential quality and tone, 
of the attitude, manner, and point of view, of the story. 
By a well-managed beginning, the reader will be put in 
sympathy — en rapport — " in touch " — with what is to fol- 
low. He will be led by it to preperceive (more or less un- 
awaredly, it is true) the attitude of mind of the author, the 
spirit in which the subject is to be handled, the mood and 
tone of the story itself, and the nature (though, of course, 
scarcely the actual event itself) of the outcome. He will 
begin at once to receive somewhat of the subjective and 
emotional impression which the story as a whole is planned 
to produce. We will not insist that this amounts to 
saying that the beginning must have atmosphere ; yet that 
is practically what it does amount to. And when we reflect 
that, after all, no fiction or drama is thoroughly good 
that does not encompass itself with an atmosphere (the 
product of truthfulness and naturalness in the facts them- 
selves and the reporting of them) ; that no play or narra- 
tive can produce a perfect total effect lacking this quality; 
and that the opening of the story will inevitably go far 
toward creating in us the impression with which we shall 
read the rest of the narrative ; — when we reflect on these 
facts, we begin to realize the importance of striking, at 
the outset, the keynote of the story. 

11. The opening of every story should make the reader 
begin to feel at once that here is a story which has, not 
merely " a name," but also " a local habitation " — a story 
which " belongs " — which deals with persons and things, 
with acts, motives, emotions, and surroundings such as, 
no matter how fanciful or impossible they may be in 



Compositional Construction 129 

themselves, are, nevertheless, as here presented real s and 
self-consistent. The reader must be made to sense this 
reality, to sympathize with, to enter into the spirit of, 
these things, to catch the point of view, the outlook, the 
purpose, the individuality, tang, and tone, of the narrative 
that presents them. Without being thus in responsive 
understanding of the nature of the story, he is unlikely to 
read further, or if he read, to do so blindly, unsympatheti- 
cally, and non-appreciatively. This function, therefore, of 
the opening — that of striking the keynote — is exceedingly 
important. The prudent writer will so select his opening, 
and so present its details, as either to create at once in 
the reader the mental attitude and imaginative mood that 
he desires, or at least to prepare him for it, 

12. On the importance of the opening as a means of 
catching attention, so much has been said by many critics 
that the present writer has chosen not to dwell, in the 
preceding discussion, insistently on that topic. This does 
not mean, however, that he thinks the catching of interest 
by the beginning an unimportant matter, but that he is a 
little doubtful whether so much emphasis on particular 
aspects of the matter may not prove misleading. For from 
feeling strongly the necessity of attracting attention at 
the outset, to striving for it unduly, is but a step. Hence 
he here gives a few paragraphs of after discussion to this 
ticklish problem of the opening as an interest-catcher. We 



3 « 



Real " and " actual," as already noted, are not synonymous. 
The sensitiveness of the mind to suggestion is such that even the 
impossible can be made to seem real to the imagination. Poe's tales 
" deal with an unreal world," and accordingly have an atmosphere 
of unreality. But while we are under the spell of Poe's narrative, 
this " world of unreality " seems a real world of unreality, and its 
atmosphere an atmosphere of reaZ-seeming unreality. 



130 Short Stories in the Making 

are now, therefore, to take up expressly consideration of 
the opening as a means of getting into the narrative 
action and of creating the suspense essential to increasing 
interest, 

13. We will first stop long enough to note that fiction 
materials should be chosen, not merely with regard to in- 
trinsic interest, but also with regard to their fitness for 
narrative-dramatic presentation. We have seen that inter- 
est seems inherent in anything of a sort that touches human 
life in general or associates itself with the experience of 
the individual; and as there is nothing in the known 
world that does not belong either in one or in both of 
these categories, so there is nothing which may not in some 
set or other of circumstances have intrinsic interest. Noth- 
ing is uninteresting in itself if presented so that its 
significance appear. 

. 14. Subject to one important qualification, therefore, 
we may say that there is nothing which cannot be used as 
material in the opening (or in any other part) of a fiction 
narrative. The qualification is, that no material is suitable 
for dramatic fiction narrative which does not submit 
itself to the methods of dramatic narrative. 4 " It must 
not only be tellable, it must be tellable in a narrative 
that obeys dramatic principles. It is easy to agree 
that philosophy and science are unsuited for short 
story presentation — that they do not yield readily 
to presentation in dramatic narrative. Yet the reason 

4 Contemporary drama shows how unsafe generalizations are 
concerning what is and what is not possible material. Brieux's 
Damaged Goods, for instance, stood the test of successful if not 
popular stage presentation, yet its material is material that has 
been held quite unsuited to dramatic presentation — that is, un- 
amenable to dramatic technique. 



Compositional Construction 131 

for rejecting such material must be one of con- 
venience and expediency, not - of absolute necessity ; for 
the master writer finds it quite possible to reduce 
philosophies and sciences to subjection, and to make them 
furnish forth, in no funeral-baked fashion, warm meats 
for the dramatic narrative. Consequently, if the writer 
has skill to find concrete dramatic and narrative forms 
through which to body forth the facts of philosophy, 
science, or any other subject, he need not hesitate to in- 
troduce this supposedly unfit material into his work. On 
the contrary, his work will gain in clearness of under- 
standing and breadth of view whenever it thus enriches 
and energizes itself from the general stores of human 
knowledge and experience. Crude as is the old morality 
play, Everyman, it exemplifies this truth; for it bodies 
forth morality and religion so well in concrete forms 5 
that even in our day — wherein the form of allegory and 
the morality seems strange, and the religious thought per- 
haps remote or alien — this old dramatic allegory proves 
impressive. Our conclusion must be, that although the 
writer needs to be exceedingly cautious how he introduces 
difficult and impliant materials, there is no such thing 
as absolutely unfit material if the writer have skill and 
creativeness to find for it concrete forms and dramatic 
expression. 6 

5 This play affords an excellent illustration of what is meant 
by the expression " finding concrete forms." In it, vice is actually 
a person; so is good works; so is death. Similarly, other abstract 
ideas, such as dying, are given concrete form (Everyman, a person, 
descends into an actual grave, etc.). 

6 " Dramatic " is here equivalent to " theatric " — suited to presenta- 
tion by the methods of the theater (for instance, by dialogue). The 
term having sometimes been given a specialized or restricted 



132 Short Stories in the Making 

15. But these conclusions are perhaps less immediately 
important than is the one which we will now take up for 
brief discussion ; namely, that the principle of an-opening- 
to-catch-interest may easily be overworked. We have al- 
ready seen how extensive is the available material having 
intrinsic interest ; but in the struggle to create a beginning 
that will at once " grip " the reader, the writer may not 
only slight some of the most valuable of the materials 
available, but also be led into adopting some form of 
opening that is flippant, overwrought, false in tone, sen- 
sational, or otherwise dishonest to fact, life, and art. 
There are ways (and often better ways) of attracting one's 
attention other than slapping him in the face; and there 
are ways (and often better ways) of arousing interest in 
a story other than that of " putting a punch " in it at 
the beginning and making that " punch " a punch in the 
reader's " wind." 

16. In truth, the cult of the punch has been a little over- 
cultivated. There are, and there always will be, many 
readers, and readers well worth having, who appreciate the 
interest quality of other than the slap-in-the-face begin- 
ning, and read with pleasure openings of discursive or 
philosophical comment, description, and what not. The 
one reasonable requirement is, that the opening shall 
adequately present the material with which it attempts 
to deal, shall closely relate itself to the story as a whole, 

meaning in this book, " theatric " ought to be used in its stead 
in such assertions as that in the text above, thus noting the 
difference between what is dramatic and what is theatric, or 
especially belonging to theater presentation. The author hopes that 
he has nowhere fallen into the unjust usage whereby " theatric " 
and " theatrical " are used in a derogatory sense — implying what 
is insincere or false, or affected rather than natural and spontaneous. 



Compositional Constkuction 133 

and shall with satisfying 'promptness hring us to the action 
of the plot itself. The writer, therefore, who has a sub- 
ject or a plan of treament that in its best-organized form 
calls for description, comment, reflection, or any other 
such manner of opening, even though it be an opening of 
which the grip-the-reader extremist would not approve, 
need as an artist not hesitate to employ that begin- 
ning. Eather, as an artist, he should hesitate not to 
employ it. 

17. Yet the practicing author, depending on his type- 
writer for an income, and the author seeking invariably 
that form which is best adapted to the particular story 
then in hand, will not despise the counsel of the impressive 
opening. To the natural born artist, of course, advice 
and caution on this matter is scarcely warrantable; he 
will build his stories as they should be built, and their 
effect will take care of itself. Yet even he should be 
advised of the conditions which (often at the expense of 
truer literature) enforce the principle on the writer who 
goes to market with his wares. To see the reader in the 
editorial office, or the literary agent whose business it is to 
know how to pick what the editor will choose — to see 
these experts in public (or is it merely editorial?) taste 
snatching at the beginning of a manuscript, then perhaps 
giving the rest of the story only a glance here and there, 
or no further glance at all, is to realize how much depends, 
from the commercial point of view, on the beginning that 
will " grip." 

18. It is no exaggeration to say that the story which 
can thus " jab " the reader with its first paragraph, or even 
its first sentence, stands a much larger number of chances, 
by and large, of meeting acceptances than does the story, 



134' Short Stories in the Making 

even the better story, lacking such a " punch " at the 
first. Nor is the result of this by any means all bad. 
True, sensationalism and similar sins have been part of 
this result. But so has been also a sharper inquiry con- 
cerning the nature of interest, the kinds of material con- 
taining interest, and the best methods of handling such 
materials in story openings. Consequent on this has come 
an improvement in the technique of openings, and a closer 
weaving into the narrative of all the fiction materials. 
Unquestionably, stories on the whole begin better than they 
used, even when they employ old-fashioned materials and 
types of opening. 

19. Our criticism, therefore, of the principle which 
directs the employment of a beginning that will immedi- 
ately " grip " the reader, is partly a caution against 
mistakenly discarding good though old forms under the 
assumption that they are not able to awaken interest, and 
a protest against forced and sensational methods in apply- 
ing a principle itself perfectly sound and thoroughly 
useful. Perhaps even the caution is superfluous. Art 
always rids itself ultimately of false conceptions and bad 
practice, and writers even of the day are freely employing 
all manner and styles of opening, many of them quite 
unhampered by slavish subjection to the theory of the 
initial " punch." 

20. Through this discussion of intrinsic interest, and 
cautioning against subserviency to a catch phrase — the 
cant " slogan " of a literary school that over-emphasizes 
what, truly conceived, is an important principle, — we 
come now to a direct consideration of the opening as a 
means of creating suspense. A moment's reflection will 
show that suspense is really the key to the effectiveness of 



Compositional Construction 135 

the opening when the opening is considered in relation to 
the story as a whole. The opening is the appetizer that 
comes before, yet is part of, the full dinner ; or if likening 
it to the hors d'ozuvre seem to make it too inessential a 
part of the meal, we may call it the first course, which 
begins to satisfy our appetite and yet makes us more 
desirous of the courses yet to come ; and what we protested 
against in the preceding paragraphs is the tendency to 
make of the opening a cocktail instead of a true part of 
the meal. For the beginning is part of the meal, and the 
writer of stories must keep in mind the fact that it, like 
every other division of the story, exists not for its own 
sake, but for the sake of the story as a whole of which it is 
a part. 

21. Hence the opening must be conceived, planned, and 
managed with reference to the whole story; and as the 
conte has but one immediate governing aim — to show us 
persons and action— we cannot escape the conclusion that 
the opening must be so conceived, planned, and managed 
that it cannot fail to make us desirous of going on in 
order to see these persons, and the events of which they 
a,re a part. This is what we mean when we say that the 
beginning should " grip " the reader. It should do more 
than merely interest him in its own subject-matter; it 
should make him desire to go on in order that he may 
see something more important that that of which, merely 
by itself, the opening treats — who the persons are; what 
their character is; what they do and how they come to 
do it ; why they are what they are ; what truth is illustrated 
by them in their behavior; and what sort of world it is 
wherein they thus move and act. This sort of interest, 
this desire, it is that is commonly meant when we are 



136 Shoet Stories in the Making 

told that the opening event should have " interest " and 
" seize " the reader. From this point of view, we need 
not, when we are selecting a beginning for any story, 
trouble ourselves primarily with questions about the in- 
trinsic interest of the materials used; our problem is 
rather so to select and manage that the material used shall 
create in the reader the desire to pass on from the opening 
to the continuation of the story. 

XVIII. The Purposes of the Opening can be 
Served by Various Kinds of Beginning 

1. We turn now to more immediately practical ques- 
tions of technique affecting the opening of the story. 
The opening is to seize interest, strike the keynote, begin 
the action, and, when practicable, advance the exposition. 
What are the means by which the writer can accomplish 
these purposes? The four things which the opening can 
immediately 7 present are : activity (action by or involving 
a person of the story, whether forming an integral part 
of the true plot-action or not) ; character ; theme ; setting. 
At this point we will put aside further special emphasis 
upon the opening as a means of advancing plot exposition, 
and deal only with its function in striking the keynote 
and creating interest; the student will, however, bear 

7 We now drop for the present consideration of atmosphere as a 
story element, confining ourselves to the less extensive term " set- 
ting." Atmosphere can be presented directly, but usually it is 
attained indirectly — mediately rather than immediately — through 
truth, naturalness, and adequacy in the presentation of other es- 
sentials, with due regard to their subjective as well as their 
objective quality. However, the substitution leaves us still concerned 
in a large measure with what is essentially atmosphere. 



Compositional Construction 137 

in mind the general desirability of early development 
of the exposition unless it seem best managed by introduc- 
ing it piecemeal as the action advances. We now consider, 
then, the topic, how to manage the opening with a view 
to securing interest (anticipatory suspense) and striking 
the keynote. We might perhaps omit mention of the 
keynote ; for the striking of the keynote at the beginning 
is after all merely another device for getting interest 
by indicating in advance that tonal quality and that 
attitude in treatment which will have so much to do in 
producing the total effect. On the other hand, as the 
means of commanding progressive interest lies mainly 
in the creation of suspense, we shall now use that term 
largely instead of " interest." 

2. For the sake of simplicity, therefore, we can say that 
all the practical problems of managing the opening can be 
solved by attending to the requirement of suspense. True, 
the opening must not be uninteresting in itself; but this 
it is not likely to be if it relate itself closely and organically 
with the rest of the story (especially perhaps with the 
plot and with the tone or atmosphere). Well-managed 
openings, then, may create suspense by : — • 

(a) Giving setting. 

(b) Delineating character. 

(c) Suggesting the tone or spirit of the story. 

(d) Plunging at once into incident. 

(e) Presenting some general proposition, or theme, 

which the story is to illustrate. 

(f) Providing necessary antecedent explanation (much 

skill is necessary to make mere expository 
matter produce suspense). 



138 Short Stories in the Making 

(g) Flinging some merely stimulative expression or 
fact at us just to catch attention (an inartistic 
method at the best ; at its worst, flippant, false, 
sensational, and offensive — the " flash " manner 
of a literary " con " game. Of course, when 
the story is legitimately told throughout in this 
manner — as it might be, for instance, in depict- 
ing character — the expression warrants itself as 
striking the keynote). 

In well-managed openings, several of these ends are 
usually accomplished at one and the same time. 

3. We next ask, what shall be our manner of approach 
to the opening? To determine this, we must first deter- 
mine, among other things, who shall tell the story. Of 
course, the writer is always, in one sense, the narrator ; he 
does the writing. But shall he write it as himself, or as 
some one else? If he tell it as himself, shall he tell it (a) 
with complete impersonality, keeping himself absolutely 
and wholly out of it, or (b) with some degree of personal- 
ity, letting himself as a recognized individual show forth 
in the narration, indicating by direct comment or other 
means his own point of view concerning the theme, persons, 
acts, and opinions appearing in the narrative, and thus in- 
jecting himself, a sort of extraneous author-chorus? Or 
if, on the other hand, he tell it as if he were some one 
else, shall he (c) tell it in the guise of a person actually 
having part in the story, either as chief actor or a secondary 
actor or even an unimportant spectator, or shall he instead 
(d) tell it as one who was himself outside the story and 
yet is not identical with the author who chances to be 
the one to set down the narrative ? 



Compositional Construction 139 

4. Each of these methods has disadvantages (we will 
not stop to discuss them here) ; but before he can make up 
his mind just how to approach the opening, the writer must 
have decided which of them he will use. With this 
decision out of the way, the ground is cleared for selection 
among the various forms of beginning. Experience will 
prove to him that every one of these forms can he employed 
more or less effectively in getting before the reader the 
facts implied in the catalogue given in paragraph 2 ; and 
any good opening, moreover, will nearly always accomplish 
more than one of the several aims there outlined. We 
will consider some of them. 

5. In making choice of an opening, the writer will first 
(let us say) choose between the dialogue and the non- 
dialogue form. Dialogue (by which is here meant direct 
speech in the mouth of any one directly appearing at the 
moment as a person in the story) would seem to offer a 
particularly effective form of beginning, the more so as it 
introduces without delay persons in action. We need not, 
therefore, attach especial importance to statistics which in- 
dicate that only some ten per cent, of short stories actually 
employ this form of beginning. True, the narrative plan 
decided on, and the spirit in which the story is conceived, 
have much to do with the rejection or employment of 
direct quotation. In some narratives, dialogue at the 
beginning would be quite unsuitable. 

6. On the other hand, to some stories it would be 
thoroughly adapted. It is, for instance, an almost invari- 
able accompaniment of action. In stories opening with 
incident, therefore, the opening may take the form of 
speech — really part of the action, and helping it forward. 
Again, speech is a valuable means of character portrayal : 



140 Short Stories in the Making 

" Thy speech bewray eth thee." To put significant expres- 
sions on the lips of a person when we are just meeting him 
in the story, is a quick and sure way to give us an impres- 
sion of his character. Again, speech frequently becomes 
suggestive, not merely of character, mood, and act, but of 
the surroundings; a few words naming actual details, 
introduced into the dialogue, may effectually outline the 
setting. In short, the opening of direct speech, when the 
plan and nature of the story permit it, is thoroughly useful 
and effective. 8 

7. Yet again, then, we return to the desirability of in- 
terest (suspense) in the opening, and the means of at- 
taining it. Frankly, the most important of these means is 
action. There is interest in setting, character, atmosphere, 
and theme, but that opening will be most effective which, 
in giving us these things, gives them to us embodied in 
or as accompaniments of action. That this action be 
plot-action is highly desirable, but is not indispensable; 
it may be merely activity (but significant activity) — 
simply an introductory episode or incident of the concen- 
trative class. But if activity there be — something moving, 
something doing, whether that something be or be not 
indispensable to the plot — by that very fact attention will 

8 Reread par. 4 ; observe how dialogue can at one and the same 
time explain situation, advance the action, indicate setting, portray 
character, make us feel the general tone of the situation or the 
mood of the speaker or the story, etc. This will impress the fact, 
that any good opening can accomplish several purposes at once. 
The more the beginning, by presenting well-related, carefully chosen 
detail, compresses into small compass and coherent form the various 
story elements at the outset, the greater its interest and effectiveness. 
The " compression " so often insisted on as characteristic of the 
conte is merely such management of detail throughout the story, 
whereby several ends are accomplished by single means. 



Compositional Construction 141 

be more immediately commanded, with the likelihood that 
it will continue and increase-. 

8. For when all is said and done, the conte exists to 
show us persons acting; hence the sooner any story gets 
action going, the sooner it will begin to show us that for 
which it most immediately exists. Even character delinea- 
tion, unless given through action, will be less interesting 
(in the more immediate sense of the word) than action. 
It will show us man, but it will not show us men in action ; 
and it is to see men in action that we buy our ticket to 
the short story show. Seasonably interpreted, therefore, 
the rule which prescribes action, or at least significant 
activity, as an important part of the opening of any short 
story, is a rule of great importance. The writer who, 
without sacrificing other qualities, and without making 
his method merely one of mannerism or sensation, shows 
us always something doing from the first, thus creating 
not only present attention, but also that forward-looMng 
eagerness that we term suspense, has successfully met one 
of the most positive requirements of the art of short story 
dramatics. 

9. Some further observations concerning the fiction 
elements likely to enter into the opening, and their skillful 
management, may be worth while. To the inexperienced 
writer, it may seem, for instance, that the importance of 
the setting to a just appreciation of the story warrants the 
placing of setting at the very opening. And he may be 
right, the more so as such placing helps to get this material 
out of the way at once. The setting is important, 
especially in atmosphere stories; yet that does not mean 
that it should all be bunched and huddled into one long 
initial passage, especially if this passage be direct descrip- 



142 Short Stories in the Making 

tion. Such was the older method, but it is not the modern 
practice. Even in the novel, modern technique now usually 
shuns the descriptive panorama as an opening, preferring 
to place description (if anywhere it describes at length) in 
chapters which lie buried within the narrative. In the 
conte, the most probable exception will be found in the 
story that emphasizes atmosphere. The atmosphere story 
is likely to draw much of its atmosphere effects from the 
setting, and it therefore shows some tendency to employ 
description more freely and to introduce it earlier than 
do other stories. 

10. Yet if this tendency be indulged, it must be kept 
under control. Even in such a story as The Merry Men, 
written by Stevenson as an atmosphere story — the fictional 
embodiment of the spirit of a grim, rock-barriered, storm- 
leaguered Hebridean coast — the narrative does not begin 
immediately with atmosphere elements. It opens with 
action (indirect). Not until he wrote some 250 words 
narrating action and preliminary fact, and giving character 
forecast, did Stevenson begin description; and even then 
the description is given excuse for appearing through being 
made the setting for further indirect action (the walk 
by which the young man who is supposed to relate the 
facts and to have taken part in the incidents, makes his 
approach to the scene of the main action). Thus, even 
though all the first chapter is, broadly speaking, concerned 
with the description of setting, its description is mingled 
throughout with elements of action and exposition and 
with character forehints. Without further discussion, 
therefore, we may conclude that lengthy descriptive pas- 
sages at the beginning are likely to prove incompatible with 
the prompt creation of suspense. 



Compositional Construction 143 

11. The beginning of The Merry Men can give us 
other suggestions if we turn aside here to take note of 
them. The advantages and disadvantages found in use of 
the distributed exposition instead of the massed have been 
noted. Chapter I of The Merry Men may be taken as a 
double-header illustration of the principle. Various es- 
sential bits of information about the locality, the young 
man, the uncle who is the central character, his old servant 
(another secondary actor), and the long-past events of 
history that later enter into the plot, are scattered through 
it, offsetting and enlivening the more solid descriptive 
parts. On the other hand, regarded as merely the begin- 
ning of the complete story, the chapter represents in a 
considerable degree, not the distributed but the massed 
exposition. 

12. Digressing somewhat more, we may observe the 
skill with which, towards the close, this chapter makes the 
description that it contains bring on the narrative passage 
informing us of the wreck — long before — of the Spanish 
treasure ship of the Armada, desire to salvage which 
motivates the events and complication of the plot. Yet 
while all this preliminary information is being got before 
us, more immediate, although indirect, action is going 
on — the advance of the young man toward his uncle's 
house and the scene of the main action. Hence, not only 
with regard to the presentation of setting, but also with 
reference to other functions of the opening, this chapter 
repays study. 

13. Further thus: It illustrates one form of opening 
in stories wherein the author writes, not as himself, but 
as another person — one who has been an actor in the 
events he reports (par. 3, C). A severe stretching of the 



144 Short Stories in the Making 

term dialogue might even bring this opening into the 
class of dialogue beginnings. But it would not belong 
there, for the speech of the actor-narrator is addressed now 
to the reader; is not speech belonging to the time of the 
action or entering into the original action in any way, 
and besides, so far as the plot is concerned, presents only 
indirect action. That is, though it is words from the 
mouth of an actor, it is not words from his mouth at any 
time when he is engaged in the incidents of the story. 
Therefore, it is not in any true sense dialogue (plot, charac- 
ter, or action speech forming part of the action itself). 
Before getting back, therefore, closer to our present topic, 
we can only note here the fact that, when setting is given 
as part of the dialogue content, it can not often be given 
in detail; for little natural and spontaneous conversation 
is of a sort to permit long descriptions. When landscape 
or other setting is touched on in ordinary converse, it is 
likely to have roused some emotion in the spectator which 
he expresses rather in exclamation than in any directly 
descriptive phrase; so that its nature is frequently indi- 
cated indirectly by the impression which it is seen to 
produce on the beholder. Moreover, even when pointing 
out the " features " of a scene, people nowadays seldom 
talk long descriptions, whatever they used to talk in an 
earlier period of fiction. 9 Both shorter speeches and 

8 To one who trusts that contemporary literature a little more 
truly answers the universal purpose of literature — the accurate 
portrayal of existence — than did any writings of the past, the care 
with which it attempts to report conversation in such language 
as is individually typical and characteristic, seems significant. 
Literature that is striving for accuracy of report even in minor 
matters, and is succeeding in its effort, is not retrogressive nor de- 
cadent — not even though judged by critics whose standards are 



Compositional Consteuction 145 

shorter and more broken sentences are characteristic of 
most spontaneous, natural conversation. Although, there- 
fore, many settings cannot be detailed at length in dialogue, 
their effect and their most notable characteristics can be 
suggested or mentioned; but for the full and detailed 
account we must (a) either resort to the massed passage of 
description or (b) depend on facts that can be introduced 
briefly and quickly, and distributed skillfully, among the 
speeches. An extended description can seldom be intro- 
duced into a single speech, and cannot always be so intro- 
duced even in a connected series of speeches, or passage 
of dialogue description. 

14. Our conclusion is, that facts of setting so introduced 
in dialogue must be chosen for their suggestive power and 
high descriptive effect — for value rather than for amount. 
The same is true when they are given along with any other 
form of action. They must be impressively representative 
facts, sure to accumulate in the reader's mind as the 
definite and leading characteristics of a unified set of sur- 
roundings. The reader then creates for himself, through 
the co-operation of his own imagination, the more complete 
picture of this setting. 

To illustrate: 

" Get back there ! Gfet back ! Keep 'em from crowding 
in, Bill." 

conservative or reactionary — men whose taste has been formed on 
older models, and who lack the adaptability or the creative 
adjustment to orient themselves in the present and thus appreciate 
the work of the present. Unfortunately, our educational machine 
finds, in the material supplied it, many heads made of suitable 
wood to be polished off after the old patterns, but only now and 
then one that can be trained and developed in the growing state. 



146 Short Stories in the Making 

"Is he hurt bad?" 

" Got his, I guess. Smashed up pretty well anyhow. 
Notify the station and get in an ambulance call quick. 
I can't do anything. Did any of you fellows get the 
number of that machine ? " 

Here are fifty words of dialogue. Let us put the same 
facts in another form — narrative and outright description : 

The policeman bent over the twisted, unconscious form, 
lying without movement in the street where the automobile 
had flung it. His mate from the next corner ran up to 
join him, and the quickly gathered crowd of curious or 
morbid passers-by and street-frequenters pressed around, 
pushing to get over one another's shoulders a sight of 
human broken bones and blood. 

" Get back there ! Get back ! Keep 'em from crowding 
in, Bill," the officer directed. 

The crowd fell back reluctantly before the second 
officer, unwilling to lose anything of the free show, and 
avid even of such useless prominence as standing in the 
front row of the spectators of disaster and being able 
to recount intimately its details to the unimportant persons 
who weren't there to see it. 

" He's smashed up pretty well. Looks like he's dead. 
I can't do anything. Turn in an ambulance call quick." 

The policeman slipped the man's slouch hat in a soften- 
ing wad between its owner's head and the pavement, and 
while his companion was at the telephone, methodically 
set down names and addresses of witnesses, with such 
information as he could gather about the accident and the 
number and appearance of the automobile. 



Compositional Construction 147 

15. Compare now the two forms of opening. In sub- 
stance, each gives the same information, either telling out- 
right or suggesting (a) setting, (b) action, and (c) situa- 
tion. The second opening is longer than the first, and may 
seem to present more interpretive or descriptive fact. But 
really it does not do so; for whatever it tells out in full 
is readily supplied from his own knowledge by any reader 
who is at all acquainted with street accidents and the 
crowds that attend upon them. Unless, therefore, it be 
desirable to picture and analyze in order to meet the needs 
of less imaginative or less experienced readers, 10 the 
dialogue form has decided superiority, because of its com- 
pactness, rapidity, and adequate suggestion of all essentials 
presented by the fuller opening. 11 

16. Either of the two openings given above is sufficient 
to enlighten the reader on two main questions in which 
he is always interested : what has happened or is happening 
(the present situation), and the place of its happening. 
But they do not give information on certain other matters 
such as are frequently presented in the opening or early in 
the development. They do not tell us who the injured man 
is, nor even give us a hint of him otherwise, except that 
(second opening) he wears a slouch hat. Both leave us 

10 Herein is a pointed hint to writers of juvenile stories. 

11 As a corollary, we may mention this: The extent to which an 
opening — or other passage — shall interpret, analyze, narrate acts, or 
picture forth in detail, must he determined by (a) the degree of 
realizing imagination which the reader may be assumed to possess, 
and (b) his probable familiarity with and understanding of such 
places, incidents, settings, and motives as are involved; together 
with (c) the author's general plan and purpose in the story, 
this determining the introduction or exclusion of particular material 
according to its usefulness in striking the keynote or laying the 
foundation for later emphasis. 



14:8 Short Stories in the Making 

to guess for the present whether this man is to be the 
central person in the story; we may find later that the 
man in the automobile is the central figure, or that figure 
may possibly be the policeman, or even some one not indi- 
cated at all yet — say another man in an automobile, who 
stops to make inquiries and offers to take the victim to 
the hospital before the ambulance arrives. Neither can 
we tell certainly that all the action will not work itself 
out in the next few minutes at this one spot in the street, 
although we rather think that the setting will shift. Again, 
this incident may be only an introductory or ancillary 
episode employed merely for its effectiveness as an opening. 
Neither can we tell whether this opening incident signifi- 
cantly sounds the keynote of the story ; we rather think not, 
for it seems tuned to action rather than to tone. But all 
such matters will come to light fully as the narrative pro- 
ceeds — and only then shall we be able to say flatly that 
they should have been or need not have been brought out 
at the beginning. For we recall that on the whole the 
opening performs its chief function when it so puts us in 
suspense that we wish to read on. Indeed, this very 
failure to satisfy outright curiosity that has been piqued, 
may be the author s means of creating the suspense. The 
effect to be thus gained by courting curiosity, or interest, 
and satisfying it only by degrees, shows the importance, 
as narrative devices, of suspense and distributed informa- 
tion. 

17. Approximately the same comment applies to 
character as applies to setting in the opening. It may be 
presented outright in massed statement, or it may be 
suggested and indicated bit by bit through significant fact 
presented in the advancing dialogue and action. And in 






Compositional Construction 149 

each instance, the massed and formal presentation usually 
proves the less successful. 12 Indeed, the formal, massed 
opening, presenting any sort of preliminary or accessory 
fact, is virtually nothing but an " introduction " — and in^ 
troductions belong to an earlier and (so we judge) less 
expert literary method. 

18. In truth, not only method but also taste has 
changed. To depend upon the " introduction " as a form 
of opening, even though the introduction be made the 
carrier of the exposition and other essentials to an under- 
standing of the story, is to court rejection by many editors 
and by a good many readers. The modern story needs a 
direct or immediate form of opening rather than an indirect 
or mediate form. We are at once to " get down to brass 
tacks." For on the whole, that interested looking- forward 
which we term suspense is not to be created 13 by anything 
but action, or at least the promise of action fast approach- 
ing. Only in exceptional instances will the intrinsic inter- 
est of the materials be sufficient to arouse anticipating 
eagerness — the desire to run forward with the story, not to 
linger (pleasantly, perhaps, but aimlessly) with the mere 
accessories of situation and action. Persons acting: that 
is what the reader desires ; we cannot assert it too often. 

19. This explains why action is so desirable even at the 
beginning. The reader will consent to be concerned with 
setting and atmosphere, background, character traits, 
theme and philosophizing as fiction materials, only when 

12 The writer will gain by describing his characters fully in 
separate analyses or summaries, keeping these descriptions by him for 
reference as notes, but not incorporating them bodily in his story. 

13 Once created, however, it can be continued by other means. 
Thus, in the falling action, it is sustained by our anticipation of 
the outcome — our desire to see the fulfillment of the plot. 



150 Short Stories in the Making 

these things have a significance outside themselves and in 
the action whereof they are the mere convoy. True, they 
may motivate this action, modify it, explain it, further it, 
hinder it — in brief, make it. Yet it is the action that 
gives them their vitality, significance, and function. Even 
character, which in an earlier division of this book we 
named as being closest to life itself in interest for the 
human mind, depends on action for dramatic presentation. 
For not until the deed is done is the character back of it 
made manifest. Hence the indirect opening of philosophi- 
cal comment — an opening which both the theme and the 
character story find of frequent use — is to be adopted only 
when all these considerations have been carefully weighed 
anew with reference to the particular story in hand; and 
unless it clearly recommend itself because of its especial 
fitness and applicability in the particular case, it is to 
be rejected in favor of an opening surer to rouse a forward- 
looking attention and directly advance the true action of 
the story. 

20. Attempting now a summary of essential facts about 
the opening as a division of the conte, we say: The 
function of the opening is, to seize interest, strike the key- 
note, introduce action, and convey exposition. Its 
materials must not merely have intrinsic interest, but 
must be so managed that they create suspense — anticipative 
desire. The surest means of creating suspense is the 
presentation of action, and action should, therefore, be 
introduced early, if not at the very first; dialogue is a 
form of action. The fiction elements which the opening 
may present, or out of which it may be built up, are action, 
character, setting, and theme (atmosphere is sought more 
mediately; it comes from accurate reporting). In well- 



Compositional Construction 151 

managed openings, several of the purposes of the opening 
are accomplished at once. Openings may be direct or in- 
direct; immediate or mediate; dynamic or static (active or 
passive) ; and may either distribute their information or 
mass it. The massed opening is generally of the indirect, 
mediate, static type, and of the nature of formal introduc- 
tion rather than of dramatic opening, and the immediate, 
direct, dynamic type is to be preferred unless the con- 
ception, aim, tone, or plan of the story as a whole makes 
such a beginning unsuitable. 

21. Finally, we should note that, when once the writer 
has mastered the technique of his craft, he should there- 
after — whether in the opening or elsewhere — allow his im- 
agination and personality free play, subjecting the tech- 
nique to his purposes rather than subjecting himself to 
his technique. For after all, the technique is but the 
means of securing adequate expression of that which the 
man and artist conceives. 



XIX. In the Body of the Story, the Chief Con- 
structional Problem is That of Sequence 

1. After the opening comes the body of the story. In 
some stories, it will be very clearly marked off from the 
beginning. There may even be a break between the two 
parts — a stopping and a beginning over. The story with a 
philosophical opening is especially likely to be of this 
sort. But whether such a break is or is not desirable, is 
a matter for particular rather than for general considera- 
tion. The general rule would be that the less obvious the 
break, the better. Yet sometimes the complete effectiveness 
of the opening is gained by just such a breaking off and 



152 Short Stories in the Making 

starting over; it sets the substance of the opening apart 
clearly by itself, giving it emphasis and significance. In 
every case, the break must be one of form or of substance 
only, not of motif or theme. The true function of the 
opening — whatever form it take — is to prepare for or add 
to the effectiveness of the drama. Hence if the opening is 
not in effect a presentation in some form or guise of the 
motif — of the vital central thought and purpose — if it does 
not in some essential way prepare us for or introduce us 
to the story so vitalized — it neither is nor can be a unified, 
homogeneous part of the narrative. In the larger number 
of stories, however, the writer is likely to find an easy 
transition rather than an obvious break. Often the open- 
ing is, to all effects and purposes, an inseparable part of 
the very body of the story. 

2. These facts bring us to the question, how shall the 
materials, especially the material of incident, be grouped 
and ordered in the story? — the problem of sequence or 
groupings. How can we determine the arrangement of 
incidents, events, descriptive passages, passages of inter- 
pretive comment, and the like, so that their potency will 
best be realized toward the totality of effect at which our 
story aims \ We will answer the less important part of the 
question first. This is the part that concerns descriptive, 
interpretive, and all other merely contributory and an- 
cillary parts. This amplifying, realizing, and concen- 
trative material, as we have already seen, is indispensable, 
not so much to the plot, it is true, as to the totality of 
effect sought through both the plot and these its accessories. 

3. Nevertheless, all material of this sort is adjunct 
material, introduced and employed as an auxiliary rather 
than as a principal factor — even though in fiction, as in 



Compositional Construction 153 

war, the auxiliaries it sometimes is, and not the main 
force, that wins success. But whether in war or in litera- 
ture, the operation of the auxiliaries is, theoretically if 
not always actually, subordinate to the operations of the 
main force. We may, therefore, set down safely the 
principle, that whatever material is contributory, ancillary, 
concentrative , or amplifying merely, is to be made subor- 
dinate and secondary to that which is primarily essential to 
the plot and its outcome. 

4. In practice, this will be found to mean either of 
two things : A, the actual minimizing of the contributing 
material by reducing it in amount or putting it in incon- 
spicuous positions in the narrative ; B, the emphasizing of 
the material, but only as an important element in some 
division or part of the larger narrative (this occurs, for 
illustration, when a description, characterization, or inci- 
dent is made the opening of a stage, or " movement," of 
the narrative, in such a way that the development of the 
stage or movement depends on this opening and largely 
draws its significance therefrom). Such employment of 
contributory material by making it important in the devel- 
opment of a division, scene, or stage of the story, actually 
has the effect of making it less prominent in the completed 
narrative; for the stage, or movement, as a whole, is that 
which is prominent in the completed story, and the indi- 
vidual parts and contributory elements are subordinated 
and merged in the division of which they are but a part. 

5. Eecognizing the necessity of subordinating to the 
main effect all merely ancillary materials, we then come to 
the problems of grouping and ordering the main facts 
and materials — the stages and movements, the incidents 
and events. The first fact on which we must insist is, 



154 Short Stories in the Making 

that all narrative is fundamentally chronological, for it 
relates action, and action begins at one moment, continues 
through a succession of moments, and ends at another 
moment. As a succession of acts, incidents, or groups of 
incidents, the short story occupies time from its beginning 
through its continuance to its conclusion; hence the 
logical (i.e., most easily comprehensible and most natural) 
order of presenting these incidents, is the time order. 
So far as incident is concerned, this is the governing 
principle of all fiction. 

6. But as drama and dramatic narrative have a more 
important purpose than merely to present the events in 
their original, or historical, sequence, each of these two 
forms of fiction is permitted to tamper with the time order 
so far as may be necessary to accomplish the dramatic 
purpose. But no further; mere inversion and transposi- 
tion of incident for no other reason than that events can 
be so dislocated and relocated, is neither good artistry nor 
good sense. Moreover, whatever the displacement of 
events that is made in the course of the narrative, this 
displacement must at the end have completely disap- 
peared; the narrative must at the last leave us with the 
feeling of a sequence unbroken and perfect from beginning 
through continuance to conclusion. Only upon acceptance 
of these conditions is the writer warranted in tampering 
with the actual historical, or time, order of events. On 
no other terms can he attain the effect of actual history; 
lacking which effect, he must fail of verisimilitude and 
therefore of belief. 

7. The true time order, therefore, is not lightly to be 
discarded. Now, what is the true time order? We have 
already described it: from cause, through phenomena, to 







Compositional Construction 155 

final effect. Let us state in more amplified terms what 
this means. Plot action begins as soon as any complicating 
influence makes itself felt. Then ensues a period in 
which one set of influences resist another set of influences, 
until comes a time when something gives one of these 
sets a lasting advantage over the other, and either then 
or later, a complete triumph. This is the natural plot 
sequence; the narrative sequence may and may not be 
the same. In all narratives in which the two sequences — 
plot and narrative — are the same (i.e., the order of time), 
we shall have first, the complicating influence and the re- 
sponse of some of the persons thereto (initial response) ; 
second, the period of resistant delay, in which the episodes 
or stages of the conflict march along, each duly following 
those that belong before it in point of time; third, the act, 
incident, or other decisive fact that predetermines the 
final outcome; and fourth, the outcome itself, either 
alone or telescoped into and practically one with number 
three. 1 * 

8. When now we seek definite schemes for thus dis- 
locating and relocating blocks or divisions of the action, 
we find various possible arrangements. Disregarding the 
separate existence of an " opening," we can indicate some 
of these in outlines, as follows : 

14 Note that the period of resistant delay does not always end 
with the decisive fact. Sometimes, as in the story showing the 
tragic advance of fate, the critical period, being one of unsuccessful 
struggle to escape a foredoomed catastrophe, wholly follows the 
decisive fact. Indeed, the decisive fact may be a wholly antecedent 
fact and therefore belong, not to the action at all, but to the 
exposition. In stories which do not telescope the ending, con- 
tinuance of conflict beyond the decisive moment accounts in part for 
the continuance of interest past this point. 



156 Short Stoeies in the Making 

Non-Chronological Order-Schemes. 



1. Incident or other material belonging to the period 

resistant delay. 

2. Complicating influence, and the initial response. 

3. Further resistant-delay materials. 

4. Decisive fact. 

5. Consequent facts. 

6. Outcome. 

B. 

1. Facts belonging to the period that follows the decisive 

fact (the grand climax, in whole or in part). 

2. Precedent facts belonging to the period of resistant 

delay. 

3. Discovery of the complicating fact, with initial re- 

sponse. 

4. Decisive fact. 

5. Outcome. 

C. 

1. Action or incident constituting the initial response. 

2. Discovery of the nature of the complicating influence 

(may be postponed to follow No. 3 or come even 
later) . 

3. Incident and other fact belonging to the period of 

resistant delay. 

4. Decisive fact. 

5. Consequent facts (including climactic situation). 

6. Outcome, 



Compositional Construction 157 

B. 

1. Facts belonging to the period of resistant delay. 

2. The complicating influence and the initial response. 

3. The decisive fact. 

4. Further fact belonging to the resistant delay. 

5. Facts consequent upon the decisive fact (including 

climactic situation). 

6. The outcome (grand climax may be included here 

instead of in ISTo. 5) . 

E. 

1. The outcome. 

2. Facts belonging to the resistant delay. 

3. The complicating fact and the initial response (No. 

3 may change place with JSTo. 2). 

4. Decisive fact (may be either preceded or followed 

by No. 5). 

5. Facts consequent on decisive fact. 

6. The outcome. 

9. The student is now warned explicitly that the 
schemes given above are (first) merely general and sug- 
gestive and (second) subject to further expansion and 
rearrangement. He will, therefore, please take them as 
they are meant to be taken — as hints, not as hard and 
fast sequences. In association with them, a few other 
significant matters may be mentioned. One is, that " out- 
come " is not necessarily the same as " ending " ; the 
closing part of the story will be discussed later. Another 
is, that the entire body of facts belonging to any phase of 
the narrative — initial response, resistant delay, etc. — may 
be distributed. Although useful generally, this principle 



158 Short Stories in the Making 

is likely to be most observed in introducing facts that 
belong to the resistant delay or to the complicating in- 
fluence. For instance, it is not uncommon to give just 
enough of the complicating influence in connection with 
the initial response to make this response intelligible, the 
remaining facts about the complication being revealed else- 
where, as they are needed. 

10. We may here sum up the results of our consider- 
ation of sequence so far as we have advanced with it. 
The controlling order is always that of time (historical 
sequence) ; when the time order is not followed, the ar- 
rangement of the materials must be such as nevertheless to 
give the reader the feeling of historical sequence; and 
the time order is to be abandoned only when abandonment 
is necessary in order to attain a more impressive dramatic 
effect not possible with the plain historical sequence. 
Ancillary material is always to be kept subordinate, this 
implying either (a) actual inconspicuousness or else (b) 
actual prominence, but only in the development of some 
important phase, part, or movement of the story — the effect 
of the ancillary material being then realized, not directly, 
but indirectly, through the successful management of the 
movement which it helps to develop. 

11. But all this is general and abstract, if not vague. 
What are the rules, put in plain, straightforward state- 
ment, that will enable one to tell how best to order inci- 
dents and events, and group other materials of his story ? 
That question I cannot answer very fully, nor have I 
found it very fully answered by others. Perhaps but one 
sentence of instruction can safely be written concerning 
the compositional construction of all stories equally, and 
that is, Tell the story as you conceive it. Study the story 



Compositional Construction 159 

in all its aspects; seek out its possibilities; consider the 
materials that are available; select those that are indis- 
pensable to your plot or the effect you intend; consider 
these materials in various groupings and combinations, esti- 
mating their effectiveness in all reasonable groupings ; try 
out different . ways of motivating, of characterizing, of 
indicating setting and atmosphere ; weigh the effectiveness 
of different openings and various endings. Then — write. 
12. Clarify your conception and master your material. 
Then trust yourself. Write the story as you conceive it, 
and rewrite it until it stands as you conceived it. If you 
are an artist, your conception once matured is of higher 
authority than all the formal rules of composition ever 
worded, and ultimately will override and subject them to 
its purpose instinctively. This is no counsel to a slap-dash, 
inspiration-of-the-moment method; for whether your con- 
ception spring full-grown and all equipped and panoplied 
from your Jovian brain, or whether (which is more prob- 
able) it be brought forth with long labor-pains and per- 
fected only through infinite care and thought, does not 
matter. Matured it must be ere it can be transformed into 
a worthy story. And it is only you who can thus mature 
and thus transform it into the artist's product that will 
satisfy you and serve the world. The conclusion of the 
whole matter, then, is but a general commandment: Con- 
ceive your story clearly as a whole, then clearly plan and 
write it as you conceive it, both (a) as a whole and (b) 
in its parts. This done, the result is on the knees of the 
gods, who made you what you are: a literary genius or 
— something else. 15 

15 Study of photoplays of the better class is recommended. True, 
the photoplay is almost always strictly chronological. But the 



160 Short Stories in the Making 

13. But there is one aim which the author will have 
in mind in all his efforts to find a satisfactory ordering 
of incident and situation: to make each scene, when this 
is possible, " cue " the scene that is to follow. If one 
movement, drawing to an end, has already brought forward 
persons and laid a stage of fact, whereon these persons 
will begin to enact the next scene, much has been gained 
in the way of smoothness and closeness of connection. 
What goes before introduces what next succeeds ; one scene 
inducts the next; the close of one situation is the cue for 
the entrance of the next. At times, however, such " cue- 
ing " may not be desirable. Emphasis, distinction, organ- 
ization, may all gain if there be a curtain-fall between the 
scenes — if one conclude cleanly within itself, and the next 
begin sharply anew. If each represents an important 
movement of the action, if they are managed well, and if 
they are logically grouped with reference to the main 
effect and plot, the mere fact that they are sharply defined 

very skill with which the sequence is kept chronological will be 
illuminative. See the play several times, in order to become 
thoroughly familiar with it; it will pay to make a list of the 
scenes for study. Then rewrite the play as a short story. The 
plot, action, and total effect being already provided, the first 
attempt can confine itself to reproducing plot and action unchanged, 
merely (a) filling in setting and providing atmosphere material, 
(b) developing dialogue and indicating character, and (c) supplying 
connection and transition between scenes. As step two, rewrite 
more freely, adhering in the main to the picture story, but 
modifying, amplifying, compressing, and adding to, as may be 
necessary in order to produce a word narrative as fluent in its work- 
manship as was the photoplay in a different manner. Finally, re- 
build the story completely, retaining the original plot-embryo, but 
otherwise departing from the photoplay presentation as much as 
possible. This will help to develop facility in adapting materials 
to varied methods. 






Compositional Consteuctign 161 

one from the other in the body of the story will produce no 
incoherence. Rather, the emphasis and distinction gained 
by each through this independence will make their co-opera- 
tive effect the stronger. The cueing of one scene by 
another, therefore, may not always be best. 

14. 'Now, while incident and event are being grouped 
to create the movements which together constitute the body 
of the story, the other fiction elements must also be given 
place. Let us consider them. Suspense, we saw, is interest 
hurrying forward to be satisfied ; and nothing draws inter- 
est on so much as action. Significant action, therefore, is 
as important in the body of the story as in the opening. It 
need not proceed at a racing gallop ; it may advance with 
the slow, steady finality of a great river, it may seethe and 
eddy like a strong tide in a cliff-bound cove, or it may ebb 
and flow with the regularity of the same tide on an open 
shore. But always it must be there, and even when it 
ebbs, he who in his reading barque has set out to sail in 
any of the waters of dramatic fiction must be able to per- 
ceive its current or feel its groundswell, and sense its 
returning flood. Whether the action be all compressed into 
one event, or whether it consist of episodes and stages, 
always the current of interest must be there, bearing on 
the anticipative reader. And to continue the metaphor, if 
it can carry him forward up to the very last, and then, 
with a final mighty sweep cast him upon the shore or 
point of outcome that he sought — why, so much the better. 

15. Chaeacteeization affords an illustration of the 
impossibility of laying down universal principles for the 
exact placing of fiction materials. One might, for example, 
be tempted to advise that, in the case of important persons, 
the chief body of characterizing matter be given at once. 



162 Short Stories in the Making 

But often it would prove undesirable, if not impossible, 
thus to give at once either an epitome of the character 
traits or any considerable body of fact concerning single 
traits. Much of the interest, pleasure, and value of associ- 
ation with persons in fiction comes, not from receiving a 
sudden, sun-burst revelation of their character, but from 
getting acquainted with their character by degrees, as one 
gets acquainted with the character of the persons whom he 
knows in actual life. 

16. But indeed, complete and immediate eharacteriza- 
ation is not always advisable even were it possible. For 
one thing, characterization is best accomplished through 
dialogue and action; and at once to introduce enough 
dialogue or action fully to set forth a character, even 
if it be the character of the principal person, might force 
us to abandon the original story merely to provide charac- 
terization in another form for the leading person. True, 
characterization by means of description remains ; but the 
dramatic narrator is always cautious about introducing 
description, and wisely so. For a single person, portrayal 
through description might be satisfactory; but if several 
important persons must be introduced, each with his ap- 
propriate portion of character-description, the earlier part 
of the narrative may be crowded so full of this indirect 
matter as to resemble nothing as much as a fictional pouter- 
pigeon. 

17. The best we can say, therefore, is this : Unless the 
temporary concealment or suppression of character is 
necessary to the plan of the story, the introduction of each 
important person is usually well accompanied by character- 
ization. This shall be more or less complete, and accom- 
plished by one means or another, according to circum- 



Compositional Consteuction 163 

stances. Ordinarily it is the dominant or decisive 
character trait that is shown ; but for purposes of contrast, 
surprise, etc., an opposite or different trait may be first 
adduced. The italicized direction given just above we may 
supplement with another : as persons without character are 
uninteresting, every important person must, on -first pre- 
senting himself, give clear evidence that he possesses charac- 
ter.' 16 Otherwise we shall refuse to become interested in 
him and his doings, and that will be fatal to the story. 
We may, indeed, when we first meet an actor in the story, 
not realize what his character is ; we may even be led to 
think it something different from what it is ; but this one 
thing we must perceive quickly — that there is something 
significant in him, and that this significance will become 
manifest as the narrative proceeds. 

18. The student will now perceive that characterizing 
material may be so ordered within the story that the initial 
characterization will tend to be either (a) inclusive, and 
hence conclusive, or (b) incomplete and hence not necessar- 
ily conclusive. If it be inclusive, it will summarize, or 
total up at once, the chief traits of the person, and put in 
encyclopedic or in epitomic form the leading facts that 
otherwise one could accumulate only in the process and 
progress of his reading. (Incidentally, we will note here 

18 Of course no one is without character; but character may be 
so weak or colorless as to seem uninteresting. Persons of such 
sort we are likely to describe as being without character. In doing 
so, we are wrong. They have character, and their character, if 
artfully reported or interpreted to us, will prove interesting. Here 
then, as always, we come back to the ability of the writer to see, 
report, and interpret, and our direction amounts only to a caution 
that the writer shall be especially careful in showing forth the 
significance of character in introducing his persons, especially if 
they be persons of the colorless, unimpressive sort. 



164 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

that this method of placing characterization is, broadly 
speaking, typical of romantic rather than of realistic stories 
— romance being the deductive and realism the inductive 
method of fiction.) 

19. Following such an introductory epitome, character- 
ization is likely to be less prominent in the remaining 
presentation; for the author is likely to feel that, having 
given his reader a complete portrayal at the first, he need 
not develop it thereafter. He thereafter does his duty as 
character-showman by acting rather as demonstrator than 
as describer or expositor — by bringing forward from time 
to time, that is, references to or instances of characteristic 
traits already made known, thus merely illustrating them 
or recalling them to the reader's mind. In such instances, 
characterization may deteriorate into initial description and 
subsequent memory-tickling. We would not be understood 
as holding this method, well used, to be illegitimate or 
non-effective; but manifestly it has serious dangers and, 
for some purposes, serious weaknesses. 

20. Haying mentioned these, we ought also to mention 
a particular use that can sometimes be effectively made of 
the more inclusive initial portrayal — that of bringing for- 
ward at once the dominant character. Whatever initial 
description may lack as compared with action as a means of 
character presentation and as a suspense creator, it at least 
cannot fail to notify the reader that the person with which 
it is dealing so exhaustively is an important person in the 
action that is to follow; and the mind will quickly jump 
to the conclusion that the person so prominently brought 
forward at the first is the person on whom the story will 
center. Hence, as a device for focusing thought on this 
person, the full initial description is frequently useful. 



Compositional Construction 165 

If, therefore, the initial characterization can, by the intro- 
duction also of action elements, or in other wise, be made 
to produce in the reader a desire to see more of this im- 
portant person, it justifies itself by success. 

21. Of environmental facts, we must speak accord- 
ing as they constitute respectively setting or atmosphere 
material. The placing of facts that are primarily a part 
merely of the setting, is governed largely by one principle. 
As on the stage the rising of the curtain, followed soon 
if not immediately by action, reveals the stage already set, 
so in the conte the first of any action movement may well 
find the setting already indicated. The essential facts 
about place, time, physical background, etc., are best in- 
dicated just before the action begins that is to take place 
in their setting, or when, the action having already been 
motivated or introduced, the setting becomes necessary to 
an understanding of the activity that is about to follow — 
for example, when the two rivals have met and are about 
to fight; the nature of the fighting-place being important 
in the encounter, as when Bertram the Dauntless hurls the 
traitorous Count de Bun Quome from the beetling crag 
into a bevy of Hottentot maidens holding a sewing-circle 
character interment in the meadow far, far below. 

22. The introduction into the narrative, however, of the 
setting just before the events are related that are to develop 
in it, is less effective than is the pre-provided stage set in 
the theater. For on the stage, the stage-set is actually 
before the eye throughout the action; when the hero's 
manly foot approaches the verge of the cliff, we then and 
there see the verge. We are not under the necessity of 
harking back and recalling that before him is an abyss that 
yawns. In narration, on the contrary, the setting must 



166 Shoet Stories in the Making 

be carried in memory ; we must either recollect the yawning 
abyss, or the action must be stopped while the yawn is 
being explained to us — a thing mightily relaxing to sus- 
pense. To overcome the consequent difficulties arising 
from this fact — the loss of vividness and of accurate realiza- 
tion of setting — narrative uses the method of distributed 
description. Either (a) the items are mentioned only as 
they become immediately important in the action, or else 
(b) an inclusive outline of setting having been provided at 
some convenient place, its items are again referred to at 
the appropriate points in order to renew the suggestion of 
actuality and bring back the picture to us. These sug- 
gestions simply may recall facts already introduced, or 
they may go further, rementioning the principal facts of 
the setting already outlined, but adding further detail, thus 
not only vivifying the description, but also filling in and 
rounding out the original sketch. 

23. The results that follow a successful introduction of 
the massed setting-statement (without or with the aid of 
distributed reinforcing statement) illustrate what can be 
done toward integration by subordinating and emphasizing 
materials at the same time (cf. XIX. 4). Integration 
means the working together into a homogeneous whole of 
all the varied materials that the author selects with which 
to tell his story and produce his effect. To introduce the 
setting-description just before the events for which it con- 
stitutes the stage, is to emphasize it by giving it prominence 
of place and space ; if the narrative passage dealing with 
that group of facts with which this setting associates itself 
be reviewed, the setting parts will probably be found to 
stand forth prominently. The result of this prominence is 
important. First, it impresses the reader with an under- 



Compositional Construction 167 

standing of the locale of the action. But beyond this, it 
incorporates itself into the total effect of the story, because 
the feeling of this locale incorporates itself into the action. 
"When, therefore, the action itself integrates with the larger 
story, this feeling — largely one of atmosphere — is carried 
with it and integrated also with the larger effect of the 
story. By emphasizing indirect material in a subordinate 
relationship, we have both kept it subordinate to the nar- 
rative as a whole, and accomplished also the opposite thing 
and made it (but inobviously) prominent in due proportion 
in the effect of the story as a whole. Thus all things do 
work together for good to them that love the artistically 
well-subdued and well-proportioned. 

24. Dropping now the problem of mere setting, and 
taking up rather the problem of the placing of all atmos- 
phere material, we find ourselves able to state no such 
absolute rules. But this will not surprise us when we 
recall that atmosphere is after all a flavor and impression, 
produced jointly and indifferently by the nature and qual- 
ity of all the materials in the story together with the 
manner of treatment they receive from the author — a 
manner which itself is largely determined by the author's 
personality. Since there is no such thing, strictly speaking, 
as atmosphere material — or rather, since strictly speaking 
everything is atmosphere material — we cannot hope to 
analyze this material out and give separate rules for its 
separate management. As atmosphere is a quality found 
throughout the story, so the materials producing the im- 
pression of atmosphere are found in every part of the story. 
We must, therefore, confine ourselves to this one generaliza- 
tion. Although whatever enters into the narrative should 
in some degree at least contribute to the impression of 



168 Short Stories in the Making 

atmosphere, this impression should be especially em- 
phasized in the opening and be well established and thor- 
oughly confirmed by the time the narrative reaches its 
climactic height. Beyond the point of climax, any attempt 
to create an atmosphere not already felt will be unsuccess- 
ful in itself, and will in all probability break the other 
effects already produced. The atmosphere should be felt 
early in the narrative, and fully realized in time to enter 
into and become a part of the climactic situation. 

25. We have now considered various particular devices, 
methods, and principles involved in the effective ordering 
of the incidents and events, and of the two other elements 
of dramatic narrative fiction — character and setting. Yet 
we find that the problem of the ordering and distribution 
of material remains specifically unsolved — that no arbi- 
trary, universal set of directions exists by which these 
materials can always be assembled with the desired result. 
Even when we have been most dogmatic in wording state- 
ments, we have found ourselves compelled to refer these 
statements for final sanction to an object and purpose out- 
side of the mere narrative sequence. We have always to 
consider our narrative methods with a view to their final 
effect, the production through dramatic process of a dom^ 
inant, single impression. 

26. ]STow out of this fact — the fact that the success 
of the conte centers in a single definite impression — comes 
another hint, and an important one, for the ordering of 
story materials. This one dominant impression is the 
total effect of a body of lesser impressions, each pretty 
definitely made by itself, and all integrated into a larger, 
homogeneous whole. But at some point in the narrative 
one such contributing impression will be made that is 



Compositional Construction 169 

deeper, that stirs and affects the reader more strongly, 
than any of the others, because^ it represents the culmination 
in a climactic situation — the height of suspense, interest, 
and emotion — of all the impressions that have preceded it. 
27. This climactic height, or emotional acme, is that 
one situation toward which all the story moves (except 
possibly near the end — and then the movement is merely 
a quick, conclusive falling away from it, in so much of an 
ending as, and no more than, is necessary to bring the 
final stop). The importance of this climactic situation — ■ 
already strongly emphasized — is the reason for stating the 
following important rule: In any story, use that method 
of ordering and distribution which best prepares for, brings 
on, and strengthens the grand climax. For without an 
impressive climactic situation, there will be no strong 
impression from the story as a whole; the unifying 
appliance will be missing from the machine — the parts 
will be assembled, but they will not be connected up. The 
further fact that usually those stories are most effective 
in which the grand climax is also the close, points clearly 
to the need of an arrangement by which the climactic 
situation shall if possible be also the closing situation of 
the story as a whole. 

XX. The Ending, if Separate from the Climactic 
Moment, Exists Merely to Supplement and 
Close the Narrative 

1. We have already indicated the most effective, and 
on the whole most desirable, form of ending — that which 
is involved in or closely follows upon the climactic mo- 
ment. A few sentences more should, therefore, be enough 



170 Short Stories in the Making 

to dispose of this form of ending. But to prepare for them, 
we must first explain the function of the close. Stated 
in popular rather than in scientific terms, it is this: To 
leave the reader ivith the feeling that the story has not 
only stopped, but actually is finished — to produce the 
sense of a rounded-out completeness of events and conse- 
quences. It exists to prevent a restless after-feeling of 
" something left undone " when the story has been laid 
aside. 

2. To leave the reader thus satisfied, is not necessarily 
to leave him satisfied with the outcome of the events; 
with this he may or may not be content. He may, for 
instance, be a believer in the " happy " ending, and, 
therefore, be disappointed with the story that has chosen 
to pursue the tragic workings of cause and effect to a 
logical unhappy ending, rather than to compose a less 
significant story of the " lived happy ever after " (so far 
as we choose to tell) sort. But if the stOry, whatever its 
individual nature, spirit, and outcome, leave the reader 
in full possession of the facts, with nothing reasonably 
to be asked further about the persons, action, or situation, 
it satisfies him in our sense of the term. He has seen the 
wheels go round that make up one tiny movement of the 
great timepiece of existence, and he has seen why these 
particular wheels go as they do ; the purpose of the ending 
was to finish up this exhibition and explanation. Or, re- 
membering that the short story, or conte, is but a fragmen- 
tary glimpse, a tiny cameo, representing in relief some 
single bit of life, we may say that the ending represents 
the last few gravings that bring up the relief into perfect 
clearness, which otherwise would have remained flat and 
obscure, making the gem appear poor and unfinished. 



Compositional Construction 171 

3. If now the climactic situation, together with what 
goes before and prepares for it, does not thus completely 
satisfy the curiosity of the reader to know thoroughly what 
(so long as it be material) actually befell in this isolated 
bit of life — if it does not constitute a complete close to 
its particular series of events, and leave him, moreover, 
in clear possession of the central thought of the story — 
then something must be added to provide this additional 
information or enforcement, in order that the reader shall 
lay aside the story with the full sense of interest satisfied. 
The function of the separate ending is, to discharge what- 
ever smaller parts remain unpaid of the debt of suspense 
when the climactic situation has been fully drawn upon. 

4. To make the grand climax likewise the satisfying 
close, two things will be necessary: First, an adequate 
revelation of the inevitable results of the conflict; second, 
a climactic situation which is in itself final and conclusive. 
The attainment of the first object — the revelation of the 
results inevitable upon the outcome — calls for what we may 
term consequential exposition; that is, exposition of after- 
results as well as of initial situation, a disclosure of what 
the after-situation will be as well as what the beginning 
situation was. The revelation of the inevitable conse- 
quences of the outcome is indispensable, for without it the 
narrative will be either ambiguous or else wholly obscure ; 
the reader will be uncertain of the consequences involved 
in the conflict, and the conflict itself will, therefore, be 
deprived of definiteness and critical intensity. Watching 
a man struggling in the river, we shall feel great suspense 
if we know he is trying to save himself from drowning; 
and we shall feel some curious interest (suspense) if we 
know that he is merely an actor whose " stunt " is being 



172 Shoet Stories m the Making 

" filmed " for the " movies " ; but we shall be troubled and 
irritated if we are left quite in doubt whether anything 
is wrong or not, and if anything is wrong, what it is. We 
say, therefore, that although the conflict in dramatic narra- 
tive should keep us in doubt of the outcome; and although 
the outcome itself does not have to be inevitable, but only 
plausible and probable under the conditions supposed; yet 
the consequences that will follow the outcome must on the 
contrary be evident, definite, and sure, presenting them- 
selves to us as inevitable. 

5. Sometimes this revelation of inevitable consequences 
dependent upon the outcome will be given by the dis- 
closure of the complication and the development of the 
plot conflict. But not always ; stories in which complica- 
tion, conflict, and thoroughly interesting action exist are 
quite possible without an indication of the exact nature, the 
details, of the results that will follow the outcome. It is 
only when the story is made fully to reveal these after- 
consequences, and to reveal them before the grand climax 
is reached, or at least before it is passed, that the climactic 
situation can conclusively end the story. CoppeVs The 
Substitute is a good example of the story in which this 
revelation is completed before and in the climactic situa- 
tion. True, Coppee does add one sentence after the close 
of this situation : " Today he is at Cayenne, condemned 
for life as an incorrigible." But this sentence is not 
necessary. "No reader but would understand from what 
has gone before that a further conviction of the ex-convict 
who is assuming another's guilt, will mean the terrific 
cumulation upon him of his earlier offenses and criminal 
record, unlightened by his later reformation. Possibly 
the words " for life " in the sentence quoted, add something 



Compositional Construction 173 

to our information — but not much ; we knew before that it 
was colossal tragedy. And unless the reader is familiar 
with the horrible prison reputation of Cayenne already, 
the mention of Cayenne tells him nothing more; whereas 
if he knows it, he knows too that there men of the sort 
Jean Francois is supposed to be, are sent. We may, there- 
fore, regard this sentence as superfluous; in which case 
CoppeVs story ends absolutely with the closing words of 
the climactic situation : " Forward, bad lot ! " and we 
know that Leturc's past has " got " him, tragically and 
ruinously. 

6. When, however, the climactic situation does not in 
truth constitute a sufficient rounding out of the story, 
we have the distinct ending. This ending will be either of 
two things: interpretive or philosophical comment, or a 
passage in which is contained the revelation of the final 
results of the outcome. The interpretive, or 'philosophical- 
comment ending, can he justified only when there is need 
of clinching the theme, express or implied, or of directing 
attention extraneously and pointedly to the effect intended. 
This may be necessary when the story is written as a theme 
story, or when the nature of the material handled, or the 
point of view chosen, produces a somewhat more loosely- 
wrought narrative than is theoretically admirable. The 
ending of comment or interpretation is especially likely to 
occur in stories that open with philosophical or interpretive 
prelude. A particular form of this ending goes usually 
with narrative told from the viewpoint of spectator or 
participant ; it is that in which the effect of the events or 
other elements in the narrative upon some person is re- 
ported. This person may be either a participant, a specta- 
tor, the narrator, or one of his supposed auditors. Example : 



174 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

" Good God ! " exclaimed Vansburgh, rising and looking 
about the cafe in horror. " That thing happened here ? " 

" At this very table." 

Vansburgh gazed at the Lieutenant in a terrified fascina- 
tion; he was white and trembling. 

" Eight there," continued the officer, pointing a slow 
steady finger at a place just beside the other. 

Vansburgh's eyes dilated as he gazed — one would have 
said he saw the thing re-enact itself beside him. Then, 
with a gurgling cry, he reeled hastily to the door. A 
minute later we heard his big motor-car leap away from 
the curb in frantic haste. 

The student will observe, however, that such an ending 
calls for an almost complete transfer of attention from 
the persons and action of the plot, to persons and action 
quite outside it — necessarily breaking the unity of narra- 
tive if not the unity of attention. It is, therefore, less 
artistic than an ending which closes at once the plot 
narrative and the story as a whole ; but it may nevertheless 
be made necessary by the plan of narration chosen by the 
author. The lesson is this : do not without full considera- 
tion choose a plan of narration that requires such a break ; 
respect the unity of action and of attention. 

7. The ending is common which shows some person or 
persons belonging to the events, experiencing the after- 
results of the outcome. It may take the form of further 
narration — the persons appearing in action under the new 
set of conditions — or of dialogue, the persons by their 
conversation revealing what these results are. It may also 
take the form of direct statement by the narrator (see 
the sentence quoted in par. 5, which is an unusually short 



Compositional Construction 175 

ending of this class). Again, it may merge into that form 
of interpretive ending in which the story is interpreted by 
indicating the effect produced by it on particular individ- 
uals (see par. 6). We have already said that brevity is 
essential in the endings. But in one sort of story (e.g., 
Xingu, by Edith Wharton) the effect is got, not from the 
conflict, but from seeing the persons undergoing the results 
of the outcome. In such a story, the ending will be longer ; 
or we might perhaps say that the plot outcome brings us 
merely to the exciting moment, so far as the total effect is 
concerned, and that the ending is in the nature of develop- 
ing detail. In Xingu, which is satirical, the effect of the 
satire against pretentious ignorance in club-women is got 
by means of a long ending showing what occurred after 
the women discovered the hoax of which they had been the 
victims; this hoax is revealed comparatively early in the 
narrative. Some students may prefer to call this ending 
the falling action of the story — which indeed, from the 
viewpoint of plot theory, it is. The distinction is not, 
however, fundamentally important here, except as showing 
the possibility of constructing plots wherein (contrary to 
the customary fact) the effect is secured in and through 
the falling action. 

XXI. A Preliminary Scheme of Important Com- 
positional Facts Will Help the Author 

1. The short story, or conte, is a dramatic report of 
some coherent bit of life. Therefore, as a report, it must 
cover the ground. To do so artistically and not merely as 
a chronicle, it must attend to a certain set of essential facts, 
assembling and managing all its materials with reference 



176 Shoet Stories in the Making 

to these facts; in looser but more familiar phrase, it 
must look out for certain points — attend to particular 
matters that will make or unmake the story. All of these 
" points " have been touched upon more or less specifically 
in the progress of our discussion ; and here, therefore, we 
can set down a list of matters ivhich the writer should 
have clearly in mind when he enters upon the actual com- 
position of his story. 17 Most writers will gain time, 
definiteness, and effectiveness by using such a catalogue, 
filling it out completely in advance, consulting it during 
composition, and checking up the completed story by 
means of it. 

2. This catalogue or scheme may take some form like 
that which follows. 

In My Story 

A. The theme is 

B. The working-plot is 

C The effect aimed at is 

D. The main complicating fact is 

E. The dominant mood of the story is 

F. The dominant person is 

G. The dominant character trait is 

H. The motivating facts are 

I. The decisive situation is 

J. The climactic situation is 

K. The outcome is 

3. This scheme may be supplemented with another, 

17 The catalogue is revised from that given in Professor Pitkin's 
valuable book, The Art and Business of Story Writing. 



Compositional Construction 177, 

listing further matters that, in any story, are likely to 
call for especial attention; namely — 

L. The main setting is ... * 

M. The atmosphere quality to be emphasized is 

"N. The foiling, balancing, or contrast elements are : 

(1) Persons and character 

(2) Setting 

(3) Situation 

(4) The anti-theme (theme denied, or in re- 
verse) 

O. The concentrative episodes are 

P. The " identifying tags " are : 

(1) For the individual persons 

(2) For atmosphere 

(3) For dialect: 

a. Ordinary speech 

b. Dialect , 

(4) Occupation 

(5) Character trait 

Q. The surprise lies in 

4. The supplementary list just given is not represented 
to be complete. It does give some of the commonest con- 
siderations that enter into the making of particular stories, 
or that belong to the more advanced stages of composition 
in any story. But every story involves peculiar elements 
which can be known only to the author as he works 
out its plot and plan; hence a scheme such as ours can 
be suggestive merely. Some such list should, however, 
be used ; for in writing, as elsewhere, prevision and provi- 
sion are worth any amount of patching up by hindsight. 



CHAPTER IV 

OTHER PROBLEMS OF FICTION-WRITING 

XXII. Observance of Certain " Unities " Prevents 
Dispersal of Effect 

1. Approaching the short story from other points of 
view, we find various other problems — such for instance 
as choice of theme or of motif, choice and management of 
particular materials and content, etc. — not all of them 
strictly problems of technique or of the conte alone, but 
all of them important in its final making. Some of these 
we shall now consider, beginning with the problem of 
unity. 

2. The true short story (conte) is characterized, as 
we have seen, by a single dominant effect. Some would 
say, worthy effect; but the worthiness of the effect is not 
essential so much to the artistic as to the ethical require- 
ments of literature. It is possible so to construct a story, 
and so to manipulate the materials and employ in the 
narrative the devices of fiction, as to elevate an absolutely 
trivial idea or emotion into the dignity of an effect. But 
such an exalting of the trivial is a triumph of mere 
technique ; it is not informed with the high spirit of crea- 
tive art ; and the result is a toy, a curiosity, an interesting 
yet useless by-product of the worker's skill, inspired 
by vanity or idleness. It is like the models of ships, 
complete sometimes in every detail, made by seafaring 
gentlemen with a knack for tools and a fondness for the 

178 



Other Problems op Fiction-Writing 179 

sunny side of a water-butt, and landfaring ditto with 
too much time on their hands ? owing to a similar fondness 
for the leeward side of a sun-touched wall. 

3. Actual moral unworthiness we cannot, of course, 
afford. JSTor are many artists found who indulge it, or 
show a tendency to do so. All art, even of mediocre rank, 
seems in Us serious efforts to have behind it a moral pur- 
pose, if not indeed to spring immediately from moral im- 
pulse. Earnest writers are animated by a desire for truth 
(even for the truth, if it can be found by man) — and this 
very fact often accounts for their writing of things shocking 
to the great, laissez-faire public, which any Lancelot Gobbo 
can see is sometimes, morally, stone-gravel blind. We 
need not insist on the matter here, but we shall be war- 
ranted in noting that time usually vindicates such writers, 
at last bringing a more plodding and dull-eyed world 
clumping flat-soled along the way which lighter-footed, 
keener-visioned men saw and traveled long before . . . 
grunting with satisfaction at having discovered it them- 
selves; whereas they have merely chanced upon the trail 
broken by unappreciated pioneers whom they used to scorn. 
Another reason why we should not insist upon " moral 
aim," or whatever cant phrase may be in fashion at any 
time for the thing itself, is this : the artistic conscience is 
not to be tampered with or constrained by outsiders; the 
deep-seeing, far-scanning artist (usually justified, as we 
have just remarked, by " the long results of time ") cannot 
do his work in the world with loyalty to either art or 
general welfare if he is to be bent to the constraints of 
anything but his own conscience, emotions, and judgment. 1 

1 " Emotions," because so great a part of human progress, law, 
and government, are founded upon feeling. The war between the 



180 Shoet Stories in the Making 

Nothing is more cruel, nothing more bigoted, nothing more 
blind to and destructive of the usefulness of art, than this 
imposition of stolid, stodgy, often stupid, standards by a 
generation educated just enough to believe in the value of 
morality, but not educated enough to comprehend the 
foundations of morality. 

4. So much in digression about the worthiness, artistic 
and moral, of the impression at which the short story aims ; 
now for consideration of that impression as the source of 
unity in the narrative. For the unity of the narrative 
drama is to be judged solely by the unity, strength, and 

states was a war of emotions — and the after-results have shown 
that, so far as the merely reasoned arguments of the two sides are 
concerned, both were largely erroneous. Our war with Spain was 
emotional. At least two of the important political parties now 
existing are, or were at their founding, the outcome of deeply-felt 
emotion. The many so-termed reform measures now being enacted 
into law, and the innumerable humanitarian and philanthropic 
undertakings that characterize our times, are at bottom emotional. 
The analytical historian can thus trace some of the greatest move- 
ments of human development to the emotions as a source. 

The fact that emotions play so great a part in our affairs, makes 
any sort of censorship unwholesome that attempts to interfere with 
the development or cultivation of the emotions, or with the direction 
of our feelings to particular ends. Such attempts cannot be 
prejudged, even by so great seers, prophets, and sages as police 
inspectors and commissioners. Their sole test is their successful or 
unsuccessful working out according to their own nature. Few of 
us would not prefer to live in a twentieth rather than in an 
eighteenth century — which fact may be taken as indicating in an 
empirical sort of way that on the whole the results of having 
things work out their own way are making a better world from 
generation to generation. Censorship of any sort is to be looked 
upon with suspicion; but censorship of art — attempts to interfere 
with the cultivation or direction of the emotions by the men whose 
whole business in life it is to see deep into and far over existence 
— is probably never warranted. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 181 

singleness of this effect. A story may violate all the 
canons of rhetorical unity, and yet (provided it be suc- 
cessfully motivated) triumphantly take its place among 
true short stories, if only it leave with the reader this 
strong single impression. 

5. How shall this unity of impression be brought 
about ? 2 We must still bear in mind the perpetual warn- 
ing, that with the true artist all things are possible — that 
even the most absolute dogma of story-writing theory may 
at any time be upset by skilled achievement taking a differ- 
ent way. No principle can safely be declared universal. 
Therefore, although we now state the usual, we are not 
stating the universal when we say that next to unity of 
action (par. llf), the surest way of providing for the single 
effect is to make one leading person the dominant person in 
the three phases of plot, action, and characterization.* If 
the plot depends on and turns about a single person; if 
the main part of the action either is carried on by this 
person, or else, though carried on by others, yet keeps 
him rather than them in the front of attention; and if 

a The all-inclusive answer to the question is this : By attending 
carefully to all those matters which produce (a) verisimilitude, (o) 
convergence to a dramatic climax with a conclusive outcome, and (c) 
subjective coloring. The paragraphs in the text aim merely to 
suggest particular means and devices by which this thorough 
integration may be achieved. 

s He may be the dominant person in the plot-action without being 
the center of interest. Thus, in The Hahnheimer Story (by Arthur 
James Pegler, Adventure, March, 1914), the reporter, Singleton, is 
the dominant person, but the interest is in the group of men, all 
yellow journalists, with whom he stands in contrast. What he 
does is important only in providing a means of characterizing these 
others collectively. 



182 Short Stories in the Making 

this person, as the leading object of our interest, is more 
fully and individually characterized than the others; — 
then at the end we are almost sure to find that the total 
impression, being thus gathered up in the fate of this 
person, is thoroughly unified. 

6. A few hints will be useful concerning the manage- 
ment of portrayal in order thus effectively to develop the 
full strength of the person in the drama. First of all, the 
character (and sometimes the appearance) of the person 
must be fully conceived. The writer must know this 
person's traits, habits, mannerisms of thought and action ; 
otherwise he cannot depict him, but will at best turn out 
one who is only a type or a stock personage, not both a 
type and an individual. Second, only the peculiarly usable 
characteristics must be portrayed. For singleness of im- 
pression, these have to be kept few in number ; abundance 
and variety of trait and mannerism may be suggested, but 
the number actually presented must be few, and frequently 
the greatest concentration of effect is obtained by emphasiz- 
ing one trait only — the dominant one. Mannerisms of 
speech and action will naturally be chosen with a view 
to manifesting, explaining, and otherwise emphasizing the 
leading trait of character. 

7. Third, the characteristics of the person must be 
portrayed mainly through act and speech; to present a 
character in a piece of dramatic fiction by means of de- 
scription or expository comment is a mistake, provided 
the same facts can as well be presented by showing the 
persons in action. Similarly, for the narrator in his own 
person to present them descriptively is poor art, if he can 
portray them through the acts or speech of persons in the 
story. The author may tell us that Smith is a liar; but 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 183 

this is not half so effective as to have Jones, a person in 
the story, say of his fellow-person : " Smith ? Oh, he's a 
gold-medal liar." That at once tickets both Smith and 
Jones ; moreover, it makes us feel as if we had heard Jones 
telling what he thinks of Smith — we realize it better. 
Fourth, only the most impressive manifestation of a trait 
should be presented. Guarding always against sensation- 
alism, the author should as far as possible present the 
most vivid, striking, and impressive deeds and speeches 
whereby the person manifests his character. 

8. Fifth, although the various elements of the person's 
character ought to be enough suggested to prevent a sense 
of distortion, yet this part of the portrayal should be re- 
stricted as much as is consistent with just perspective. 
Finally (and this comes near to summarizing the whole 
matter), the person should always be shown in some activ- 
ity that directly furthers the plot-action, in preference to 
that which will leave the plot unadvanced ; but all that he 
does should, while advancing the plot-action, also reveal or 
explain his own character. 4 " 

9. The principles here stated are equally applicable in 
the case of less important persons, so long as the im- 
portance of these persons is kept subordinate to that of 
the leading actor. About the portrayal of subordinate, 

4 Probably it is unnecessary to explain that the rule of plot 
utility just stated must be applied with judgment. At times it 
may be worth while for the sake of characterization, theme en- 
forcement, or atmosphere creation, to show the person in activity 
that does not directly further the plot. There may even le times 
when delay in or postponement of the plot-action will be desirable. 
The author must use his judgment in determining how far he 
shall go in the employment of merely concentrative or amplifying 
material when presenting his leading person. 



184 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

or secondary, persons, however, two facts should be noted. 
That the secondary person is less important to the final 
total effect, suggests that he should be portrayed with less 
fullness; accordingly, the presentation of subordinate 
persons is, in comparison with the portrayal given leading 
persons, more sketchy and incomplete; and, whereas, the 
leading person is a type individualized, the subordinate 
person is likely to be merely the type or (possibly) merely 
the individual. A fuller portrayal might result in dispro- 
portion in the completed narrative, and, even more un- 
fortunately, in putting forward another person to compete 
with the dominant actor for our attention. The other fact 
to be noted is this: Subordinate persons, especially when 
serving as foils and introduced primarily to offset or other- 
wise emphasize the dominant person, may sometimes be 
satisfactorily portrayed through expository description or 
comment where downright action would be used with the 
dominant person. Such presentation enables rapid and 
summary portrayal to be made, thus preserving proportion 
and due subordination. It has too the advantage of 
permitting (by way of implied or directly stated contrast) 
comment upon and explanation of the dominant char- 
acter, and of introducing this explanatory matter in 
the lower levels of suspense and the subordinate parts 
of the narrative, where it will not hinder or clog the 
action. 

10. But although — excepting unity of action (par. 14) 
— unity of person (and, therefore, unity of character) is 
the commonest and on the whole the most dependable means 
for securing unity of narrative 5 and unity of impression, 

6 Emphatically, this assertion is not to be wrenched into com- 
mendation of the " history-of-a-life " or " from-the-cradle-to-the- 



Other Problems of Fiction- Writing 185 

other means are often equally successful. There is, for 
example, unity of time — the association of the events and 
persons so closely in time that they seem to belong naturally 
to the same body of fact and happening. Turning this 
fact end-for-end, we may say this: when matters, even 
though otherwise closely associated, are widely separated 
in time, it becomes more difficult to think of them together. 
Therefore, it is better that, for time unity, all the events 
be confined to a comparatively short and unbroken 
period. What this period shall be is better left to the 
judgment of the writer when he comes to build his 
plot and determine the incidents of his story. (See 
par. 12.) 

11. For indeed, whether this period shall be one of a 
few hours only, or one of years, depends much on the skill 
of the writer in making all the facts depend upon one an^ 
other so closely and so evidently that the lapse of a long 
time between cause and effect is either lost sight of or else 
is felt as an essential element of the situation. Neverthe- 
less, the general nature of the conte dictates that, when 
the plot incidents are several and occur at widely separated 
intervals, the most significant of these shall be chosen as the 
chief, to produce the main situation, all the rest being 
reduced to complete subordination as mere expositional or 
ancillary fact. The story then constitutes one main 

grave" type of story. It is possible within a brief narrative to 
skeletonize the history of a courtship, a life, or any other series of 
events associated with a single person; it is even possible to make 
this skeleton history interesting (especially to immature readers 
of certain — and uncertain — ages) ; but seldom indeed is it possible so 
to unify such a concatenation of condensed episodes as to produce 
through them any single effect at all akin to that of the dramatic 
short narrative, 



186 Short Stories in the Making 

episode, incident, or event, supported by a body of second- 
ary, explanatory matter. 

12. It is evident, therefore, that the unity which de- 
pends strictly upon the time element is possible only when 
the chief incidents occur within a few hours or possibly 
days. When the story material is distributed through 
long periods, the unity is that of action and motivation 
(or of character) rather than of time. Thus, when the 
pope's mule, after seven years of waiting, kicks Vedene 
zenithward in revenge for his scurvy trick of the earlier 
date, we feel no break in the action — in the operation, that 
is to say, of cause and effect. Nor in The Necklace do we 
feel any break in the continuity, the unity; and yet ten 
years pass between the motivating happenings and the 
revelation of the tragic outcome. We feel no break because 
there is no break; the moment the necklace is lost, that 
moment the outcome begins — cause begins to work' effect, 
and skillfully condensed and rapid narration carry it for- 
ward, creating the illusion of long stretches of time, until 
the full catastrophe has been achieved and is ready for 
disclosure to the reader. We therefore say that, when 
motivation is clear and adequate, unification results no 
matter how long the intervals between the initial operation 
of the cause and the final production of its effect* 

13. Again, a more or less satisfactory unity may result 
from the association of the events with a single place or set 

6 The student is, of course, assumed to be familiar with the 
fundamentals of narration as a compositional process. He will 
appreciate, therefore, that in stories such as we have just been 
considering, the principle of continuity of advance (usually called 
movement) is especially important. The three means of retarded 
movement, accelerated movement, and emphasized transition, are 
here the writer's chief narrational dependences. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 187 

of surroundings. This we call unity of setting. Yet again, 
incidents otherwise unrelated niay be akin in mood or tone 
• — that is, in atmosphere quality — and therefore, brought 
together, may give us unity of atmosphere. Or yet again 
various distinct incidents may each illustrate and develop 
the same central thought or truth, in which case they 
produce, when assembled, unity of theme. 

14. Yet another unity, however, is the unity most 
often urged by advisers upon undertakers of the short 
story — unity of action. Unity of action results when the 
one definite single outcome is brought about by an unbroken 
sequence, or a completely interlocked set, of incidents. 
We may without inaccuracy call it unity of motivation, 
provided that we understand the motivation to be directed 
to the production of a single outcome. Unity of action is 
the necessary development of close-wrought plot; and for 
this reason we need not discuss it in detail here. No plot 
incident needed for the unfolding and advancement of a 
close-wrought plot, will violate unity so long as it be kept 
within the bounds of proportion in its individual develop- 
ment. And lest this remark may seem perhaps to imply 
that all non-plot incidents violate unity, we will add that 
only such non-plot incidents as are episodic and digressive 
without being at the same time concentrative or intensify- 
ing, necessarily transgress the canon of unity of action. 
We have already made clear the function of the concentra- 
tive incident distinguished from the plot incident. To 
avoid a break in the unity of the action, therefore, the 
writer has only to guard against having more than a single 
final outcome to the story. There may be preliminary 
movements, of course, each having its own individual out- 
come. But before the story is ended, each and all of these 



188 Shoet Stories in the Making 

subordinate outcomes must have become incorporated in 
the action of the larger story, and made a contributing 
cause of the final outcome. Unity of action, then, is se- 
cured by providing the necessary body of plot incidents to 
bring about the single final outcome of a close-wrought plot. 
Its importance is so obvious that we need only to state it 
in order to emphasize it. It is alpha and omega among 
the unities. 

15. As a closing word about the management of short 
story materials with a view to securing unity, we may set 
down yet another generalization. We can see that, in order 
to accomplish one purpose, the writer may be compelled to 
neglect other equally legitimate purposes which he might 
pursue by means of his dramatic narrative. In emphasiz- 
ing theme, for example, he may find it necessary to pay 
less attention to characterization. But no prudent writer 
will neglect any of the desirable ends of dramatic narrative 
at any time if he can serve them together without the 
sacrifice of his single dramatic effect at the end. Unless 
compelled by inconquerable difficulties, he will not slight 
characterization in the story of theme or of action, nor 
atmosphere in the story which is to be effective through a 
surprise ending, nor action in the theme story. He will 
recognize that the more thoroughly he presents, at one and 
the same time, all the elements of fiction (all the time 
duly subordinating them to his dominating purpose), the 
more thoroughly will he succeed in his artistic aim. Our 
closing generalization is, therefore, this : In any story, the 
fullest unity will usually depend upon the observance to- 
gether of all the different sorts of unity — unity of person 
and character, of time, of place, of motivation and action, 
of atmosphere, and of theme. In proportion as these are 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 189 

respected and utilized in the story, in still greater propor- 
tion will that story at the end ptoduce a completely unified 
impression. 

XXIII. Decision upon Plot and Selection of De- 
veloping Material Must be Determined by the 
Author's Detailed Familiarity with the Facts 
Involved 

1. Young (that is, inexperienced) writers are notorious 
for selecting themes and materials that they cannot handle. 
Sometimes such a choice of unsuitable material arises only 
from their lack of knowledge of what constitutes dramatic 
value; sometimes it results more from a mere personal 
dissatisfaction with life and environment — the writer as- 
suming that because his vain imaginings of a life dif- 
ferent from the sort he leads, satisfy him and solace his 
restlessness, they are, of course, suited to entertain and im- 
press other people. The mistake is fatal. 

2. Mere personal dis-ease and ferment have seldom 
made an artist. They never did so unless the fermenting 
person possessed in no inconsiderable amount artistic in- 
sight and judgment coupled with energy enough to make 
him put his dramatic conceptions of better things into 
finished, artistic form. Even with the greatest, the at- 
tainment of some degree of settled conviction seems neces- 
sary to the production of the best work; the output of the 
sturm-und-drang period — of the turbulent youthful days 
when immaturity is kicking against the pricks and tem- 
perament and reason are seeking a working relationship 
with the world — perhaps never reaches the excellence of 
that which is put forth when the man has developed, 



190 Short Stories in the Making 

through questioning, impulse, and conflict, a more perma- 
nent and self-controlled attitude. The best work of any 
man is not that of his spiritual unrest, impulse, and re- 
bellion. Schiller's The Robbers does not compare with his 
Wallenstein; Shakspere's earlier plays cannot compare 
with those written when he had come to a deeper, though 
a sadder, understanding with the world ; Dante's New Life 
does not compare with The Divine Comedy. 

3. Even with the masters, the storm-and-stress work 
is comparatively of inferior worth. The greatest art — 
with the individual artist as with the world's art — is posi- 
tive, not negative, constructive, not destructive, fuller of 
faith than of ferment. It is eager, not so much to protest 
as to see and Jcnow, in order that it may report and inter- 
pret ; and therefore, it does not cultivate itself as a solace 
and escape, but as a means to the expression of great con- 
ceptions sprung from great understandings of the world it 
has studied and experienced. Therefore again, it is always 
aware, not of merely the bare facts, but of the larger, 
deeper facts of which these things are solely outward 
signs and symbols. It has learned to stand aside and esti- 
mate the value of its possessor's knowledge and experience 
as material for presenting concretely the conceptions of 
life which take form in the mind of the artist. In this 
sense, it is detached, impersonal, coldly practical, and 
unimpassioned. It never makes the mistake of thinking 
that, because an author is irritated by a pebble in his 
shoe, he is, therefore, qualified to write a history of the 
journey of life. 

4. It does not follow, however, that since the author 
accepts and rejects materials according to their value for 
his artistic purpose, only certain limited kinds of fact are 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 191 

available to him. To the skillful artist, and under suitable 
conditions, any fact whatever is available. On this we 
will not linger ; it is more to our purpose to note that the 
availability of any fact to a writer depends on himself 
much more than it does on the fact itself. If he lack 
dramatic instinct — if he have not the architectonic sense, 
the sense of the master-builder for form and method, 
whereby he discriminates justly between what at the 
moment will and what will not best body forth his con- 
ception, best serve his constructive and interpretive purpose 
by concretely expressing it, — he can scarcely use any facts 
effectively, no matter what they be. Without the dramatic 
sense, the constructive instinct for form and method, the 
master's judgment of the pliant suitability and expedient 
adaptability of certain facts over all others for his partic- 
ular purpose — without these, the writer is a landlubber 
adrift on an uncharted sea, lacking, moreover, a compass 
and knowing not even the fixed stars. 

5. The truth is, that the value of any fact for dramatic 
narrative does not He in the fact as a fact, hut in its 
efficacy (direct or indirect) in bringing on an outcome 
that is significant. Just what significance is, is hard to 
define. The veriest skit will sometimes interest us, lure 
us on to its conclusion, and satisfy us with its outcome, and 
yet have no outcome that drives home a serious truth, 
gives a philosophical view of life, or otherwise seems to 
be of permanent worth. 7 On the other hand, the most 
labored and serious narrative, ending in tragedy and ruin, 

7 Our satisfaction comes from having realized through the skit 
some aspect of life or feeling, even though but a trivial one — the 
presentation having in addition possessed the quality of being 
" interesting," as people are who can hold our attention pleasantly 
and escape boring us. 



. 



192 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

may fail to leave us with a sense of its being in any true 
way an interpretation of life (we usually describe it as 
" not convincing "). 

6. Apparently, then, we must in the long run judge 
every conte 8 according to its outcome and effect. If it 
leave us with a sense of having been in touch with life as 
it is, or as it ought to be — if it interpret to us some person, 
motive, deed, environment, or truth, in such a way that 
we feel our time well spent in getting the interpretation — 
we are warranted in saying that the outcome has signifi- 
cance. That outcome is significant which, helped out by 
the narrative, produces in us a better understanding of 
existence, the sense of having realized or of understanding 
life or men more fully, or a feeling of sympathy either with 
our fellows in general or with the individuals portrayed in 
the story; or which in some other way leaves us with the 
feeling that we have increased either our mental, our 
emotional, or our spiritual well-being or experience. But 
for its fullness this assertion is identical with the briefer 
one that declares the purpose of fiction to be, either to 
divert and amuse, or to interpret life; but it has along 
with the disadvantages of length the advantage of setting 
forth a list of those matters which are the source of the 
diversion or the interpretation. 

7. Now, the man with the dramatic instinct is the man 
who can sense in a fact or a group of facts the potentiality 
of a situation and outcome that will thus divert or make 
real and interpret. The facts suggest to him a situation, 
or a series of incidents and situations, that will either 
amuse us or make us think or feel more or less deeply; 

8 Equally applicable to the novel and other forms of fiction — but 
emphasizing "outcome" less. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 193 

they fall into organized relationships in his imagination, 
growing through a critical period to a climactic moment ; 
he fore-visions this moment and its outcome, sensing its 
power to amuse or otherwise stir and stimulate people — he 
" sees a story " and an impressive outcome in them. But 
the man who can thus fore-vision such a series of situations 
and perceive the effective outcome whereto they lead, is 
comparatively rare ; he is the " born " story-teller, the 
" natural " dramatist, whose work will be of the highest 
dramatic quality. A greater number of persons have this 
ability to a limited extent, and by assiduous training can 
develop in themselves a reasonable degree of skill in the 
conceiving and writing of stage or narrative drama ; a still 
larger number have just enough of it to appreciate good 
artistry in play or story, but not enough ever themselves to 
become proficient playwrights or story-tellers. These sup- 
ply the " educated public " to whom the artist must look 
for anything like a just evaluation of his work; but un- 
fortunately even they, lacking the creative gift, and owing 
their development largely to training based on the stand- 
ards of preceding generations or past ages, are sometimes 
conservatively slow to recognize the merits of newer 
methods and newer embodiments of the eternal truths. 

8. There remain, however, all that part of the populace 
who have so little of the dramatic instinct, or have it so 
little developed, that they are incapable of discriminating 
the significant from the insignificant, and who, therefore, 
are not able to tell the worth-while from the worthless. 
Probably this part is larger than all the others combined. 
And yet most of the people belonging to it are to some 
extent readers — a fortunate thing, perhaps, since they 
afford a market for many writers who cannot reach higher 



194 Short Stories in the Making 

than the mediocre, and (a good deal more to the point) 
since their reading habit must in the end bring them to a 
higher standard and thus improve the popular standards 
generally. Yet always there will be a large reading public 
incapable of justly valuing stories, because lacking in 
dramatic and artistic instinct, insight, and sympathy ; they 
cannot evaluate incidents or other materials of artistic pres- 
entation, cannot relate them justly to one another in their 
own minds, cannot comprehend them. Hence they are 
blind alike to significance or to lack of significance in the 
outcome itself. In thus discussing the public which reads, 
we are not in fact getting away from discussion of the 
author who writes, for, from what we have said, it is easy 
to return to the assertion, that the great writers of the 
short story must be born such before they can make them- 
selves such, and that only those with enough dramatic in- 
stinct to recognize the possible outcomes latent in any fact 
or group of facts, and the potential significance of such 
outcomes, can hope even for mediocre success in the writing 
of dramatic narrative. 

9. " But," the young writer with ideas of the "power " 
of literature will by this time be exclaiming — " But you 
have not said a thing about my view of life ! Doesn't this 
cut any figure in my story writing ? Am I not to choose 
great and noble and powerful themes, and then select my 
materials with reference to them ? You speak as if I were 
to be merely a reporter, but I want to be in charge of an 
editorial page. I have a message for the world; I have 
something to say; I want to write in order to express my 
view of life ! " 

10. Perhaps the zealous young story writer who believes 
in the " influence " of literature is right in his conviction 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 195 

that the author's view of life should determine, or at least 
help to determine, his choice of materials and his purpose. 
We will agree with him, provided that he and we can agree 
upon a definition of " view of life." To reach an under- 
standing, let us talk over two or three matters. First of 
all, we have decided already that there is no reason in the 
nature of things why short stories cannot be written suc- 
cessfully as both contes and purpose stories. But at the 
same time we noted the greater difficulty of producing a 
thoroughly artistic story that should be also a purpose 
story. This difficulty should be a caution to the writer 
not to attempt the exploitation of his view of life unless 
his experience and skill assure him of ability to develop his 
chosen theme in a truly dramatic narrative — to embody it 
in a true short story, not merely to present some incidents 
and situations illustrative of the theme. And we have 
seen just above, that the only hope of producing a true 
short story lies in the possession of the dramatic instinct ; 
we may have all the " views of life " that could be found 
in an epitome of the world's philosophies, and write stories 
about them from youth to old age, yet fail to produce even 
one true conte unless we have also this dramatic and 
artistic sense. And if we have the artistic and dramatic 
sense, together with a seeing eye, we can write any number 
of short stories that will express a view of life, whether we 
have thi$ end in mind or not. For (we repeat) a true 
report of any coherent portion of life cannot fail to embody 
a truth about life; the theme is there regardless of the 
writer. Life states and illustrates its own themes, and it 
interprets them itself. 

11. Hence, although the earnest young person's aspira- 
tion to be a writer of leading articles for the editorial 



196 Short Stories in the Making 

page of the great periodical of life is natural, it is often 
dangerous to his success and usefulness, and almost always 
unnecessary from any point of view. The editorial page 
of the newspaper is valuable and necessary — but it is the 
" big story " written by the good reporter and placed prom- 
inently on the front page, that mostly sells the paper. It 
sells the paper because it is that wherein the reader finds 
immediate contact with life and men; the editor gives him 
a formal interpretation of men and events, but the reporter 
(if he be a good reporter) comes far nearer to giving him 
the men and the events themselves. And the men and the 
events, not primarily the statement of their meaning, is the 
thing of interest to the reader. According to his ability — 
greater or less as the case may be — the reader will find the 
interpretation for himself if the report he adequate. And 
herein is more than a passing hint for the writer. As 
it is primarily the news report and not the editorial article 
that makes the newspaper, so it is primarily the report 
and not the interpretation that makes the drama, either 
acted or narrated. The author can have no higher ideal 
than the ideal of the great reporter — so accurately to report 
the significant facts that their meaning is evident without 
extraneous interpretation. He will use not quite the same 
reporting method, but he will aim at the same result. He 
will tell the essential facts in such a way that they will 
reveal their own meaning. 

12. Yet inevitably every man — and the artist much 
more than most other men — will have his individual view 
of life, and this view of life will to no small degree color 
and determine his report. He will not voluntarily permit 
it to distort his report or falsify his presentation, but he 
will not attempt to see things otherwise than as they appear 



Othee Problems of Fiction-Wbiting 197 

to him. To this extent, his view of life must and should 
enter into his writing. It is , that which gives him a 
personal point of view, a body of standards, a set of tests, 
a touchstone, by which to estimate the significance of 
situations and events, of traits of character, of motives, 
of outcomes ; in brief, the meanings of all those innumer- 
able facts with which he has to deal. This means only 
(but very emphatically does mean) that the writer shall 
have thought over and studied the substance and materials 
of his art until he is thoroughly acquainted with them — 
until with the authoritative judgment of the expert he can 
formulate opinions well enough founded upon knowledge 
and professional experience to merit presentation in con- 
crete form to the world. Only thus can he " write of the- 
thing-as-he-sees-it for the God of things-as-they-are." 

13. By view of life, then, we shall agree not to mean a 
set of theories and hypotheses to be expounded and argu- 
mentatively established, albeit the great artist can expound 
and establish such theories by means of fiction. We mean, 
rather, that more or less consistent and unified set of 
personal opinions and feelings which determines the 
writer's attitude toward existence in the abstract — that is, 
existence separate and apart from him personally. This 
assertion, however, requires a little explanation. In saying 
that the writer's outlook is an outlook on existence in the 
abstract, we do not imply that this outlook shall not be 
affected by his personal experience of life. Were such 
an outlook possible — and it is not — it would be worthless ; 
we had as well have seasickness described by a man who 
has lived all his life in the Sahara and never mounted a 
camel. What we imply is an outlook generalized from the 
world's theory and practice in the light of personal observa- 



198 Short Stories in the Making 

Hon and personal experience. As thus generalized, the 
writer's view of life may be largely independent of and 
different from his individual practice of existence — from 
his individual morality, the " practical ethic " of his 
personal existence. "Not infrequently, his individual 
practice will show many departures from the view of life 
— life as it is, or as it ought to be — embodied in his writ- 
ings. This is inevitable. He lives his own life as he must 
and can ; but upon life in general he looks with detachment, 
as a thing to be regarded removedly if not impersonally, 
and with scientific coldness. True, notable fiction has been 
written expressly to body forth personal experience, the 
emotional and spiritual history and views of the author 
as well as the external events of his life. But in much 
fiction of this sort, research shows, there has been extensive 
manipulation, modification, and idealization ; the " auto- 
biographical element " has been largely and freely altered, 
sometimes even transformed, in the treatment. Moreover, 
when this has not occurred, the world has usually found 
somewhat of weakness and inconclusiveness in the work. 
The artist, we are compelled to acknowledge, is larger and 
more important than the man he inhabits, and the artist's 
view of life is consequently larger, saner, more human, 
and more conclusive than the outlook merely of the man. 
And it is this broader outlook, this generalized opinion and 
conclusion about life, not to be expounded and exploited 
as theory, but to be bodied forth in the concrete form of 
imagined incident and character, at which the writer had 
better aim; for it is this view, rather than any more 
personal, emotional, and impulsive body of opinion, that 
can most helpfully enter into, inspire, stimulate, and give 
lasting interpretive value, to his work. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 199 

14. Here we may stop to answer a question that divides 
itself between the ethics of art ,and the demands of com- 
mercial success in writing; namely, whether the writer 
must always believe or approve the idea, or theme which 
can be found at the root of the story he writes? Must 
he so direct his story that the outcome presented, the 
thought exemplified, shall be one that he himself accepts, 
or is he at liberty — perhaps sometimes under obligation — 
to report life in such forms, under such combinations, and 
with such outcomes, as he would not have it, or feels that 
it does not, possess \ Let us phrase this question in various 
ways. May he, with honesty to himself and his art, report 
life from any and all points of view ? May he report it 
as the newspaper reporter presents his story of a murder, 
a seduction, a terrible accident, interpreting, making hu- 
manly comprehensible, without advocating the thing? As 
a literary creator and experimenter in human motives and 
behavior, must he confine himself to creation only of such 
characters and deeds and situations as he could approve 
of in actual life under the tests of his personal theory of 
morals, justice, social order, and the like ? May he report 
what he knows to exist, even though it be in its nature 
contrary to his own moral standards ? Is it allowable for 
him to study men and women, motive and act, character 
and life, by means of imagined facts, persons, and situa- 
tions of a sort " beyond the law " of his own approval ? 

15. Stated in terms like these, the question loses a 
good deal of its seeming difficulty. Not only is the artist 
a reporter, who therefore must cover his run; he is also 
a scientific observer and experimenter, studying and trying 
out life theoretically in many forms and under many con- 
ditions, and communicating the notes of hiis research to 



200 Short Stories in the Making 

the world. As we have said repeatedly, he is under no 
obligation to assume the part of advocate. It needs no 
assertion, that the writer who could not conceive charac- 
ters, incidents, and situations of a sort opposed to those of 
which he would himself approve, could not enter deeply 
into character or motive of any sort; his treatment of 
life would be superficial, because his understanding of it 
would be superficial — and superficial is an exceedingly 
weak word with which to designate the fact. The great 
duty of the fiction writer is to interpret life by reporting it 
accurately; half his possible usefulness would be made 
impossible if he were forbidden to report anything but 
that in which he himself believes. 9 

16. The moral difficulty of the question being thus re- 
moved, the commercial aspects demand consideration. The 
first of these is that involving the financial and worldly 
success of the author. Shall the artist brave inevitable 
misunderstanding, with consequent hostility, censorship, 
and persecution, because he has conceived a set of facts 
that do not square with the always-has-been or the what- 
I-think of a too-much-reading and too-little-thinking world ? 
Mr. Arnold Bennett advocates the prudent horn of the 

8 True, a large part of the public cannot conceive how this is 
true. Lacking (as we have said) the dramatic instinct, analytical 
acumen, and consequently the ability to estimate values for them- 
selves; unable to distinguish between exposition and advocacy; 
untrained to see effect in cause and cause in effect; accustomed and 
pleased to have their opinions supplied by others, since they cannot 
safely trust their own mental processes; and (one thing highly to 
their credit) possessed — though it be sometimes at second hand — of 
a strong conviction that right is right and wrong is wrong; — the 
contemporary public in any time is likely to protest with all the 
intensity of ignorant righteousness against examples of interpretation 
which are too much for its comprehension — provided that such ex- 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 201 

dilemma ; go as far as you safely can, is the substance of 
his advice — with the broad intimation that sometimes this 
will not be very far. Mr. Bernard Shaw exemplifies the 
go-as-far-as-you-like theory, but he exemplifies it only in 
the going. He has not escaped hostility and venomosity, 
although his brilliancy, independence, fearlessness, and 
various conditions that have aided him, have given him 
a success in facing down a censorious public that most of us 
could not expect. From the point of view of commercial 
success, Mr. Bennett gives good advice. Still more a 
matter of business is the second aspect of the commercial 
problem. If the writer is to supply a market, he must 
provide an adequate supply of goods. To do this, he will 
sometimes find himself obliged to make stories out of 
whatever materials are at hand. The mill must be kept 
grinding, and the miller cannot always wait until he gets 
a grist of good wheat. In all these questionings, the writer 
must decide his course of action for himself. But one 
may ask seriously whether the frequent construction of 
stories wherein his own conviction or point of view is 
set aside may not in the long run be likely to lessen 

amples happen to be brought to its attention sensationally enough 
to stir interest. Then we have the amusing situation of a well- 
meaning public raging against book, play, picture, or statue as 
" immoral," at the same time accepting without qualm or thought the 
" morality " of the melodramatic photoplay, of the slushy love-story 
found in women's magazines, of the inexpressibly stupid and vulgar 
" daily short story " of the newspaper, of the burlesque " show " of 
the theater, and other forms of rain-barrel or thunder-bird literature 
and drama poor enough or violent enough to gratify their primitive- 
era taste. Time, however, rectifies all these aberrations of that 
" amoosin' cuss," the public, and the interpretation that is accurate 
and true ultimately establishes itself in literature and performs its 
part in educating the world better to understand itself. 



202 Short Stories in the Making 

the strength and vigor of his earnestness. The good 
writer must obey the injunction of " put yourself in his 
place " when he portrays persons acting. To enter into the 
thoughts, feelings, and point of view of another for the 
purposes of artistic and spiritual comprehension is, how- 
ever, one thing; to enter into them for the purpose of 
literary manufacture is another; and in art as in life, it 
is sometimes hard to tell where honorable association ends 
and virtual prostitution begins. 

17. Here let us summarize. More is necessary to the 
writing of good short story (conte) or stage drama than 
the mere impulse to express personal ferment (or for that 
matter, enthusiasm). There must be in the author, sup- 
ported and reinforced by an all-round literary sense, a 
true, well-developed sense of the dramatic — of significances 
distinguished from trivialities and non-significances, and 
of the relations of cause and effect (i.e., a sense for the 
motivation of situations truly illustrative or interpretive 
of life). This dramatic-literary instinct will find the most 
effective expression through accurate reporting based upon 
insight and the possession of the essential facts, such pres- 
entation being what gives effect even to stories that are 
frankly purpose stories. But for such reporting, a set of 
standards is necessary, and this set of standards is found 
in the writer's view of life, which guides him in seeing 
and presenting facts, and animates or gives spirit to his 
work. But his view of life need not stand in the way of 
his portraying themes, characters, or situations that are 
in opposition to it (especially when the presentation is 
objective). As a student of and experimenter with the 
facts and influences of human life, he is at liberty to 
make fictional report of things as he sees them, be they 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 203 

what they are; and he may, therefore, portray that with 
which he lacks personal (but hot artistic) sympathy, or 
that which is inconsistent with his personal (or with the 
usual worldly) view of life, provided that the spirit in 
which he makes the portrayal is that of the artist, and that 
he stop short if at any time he find himself making the 
portrayal in a way that violates his fundamental sense of 
propriety and truth. The adjustment between personal 
and artistic conscience on the one hand and the presenta- 
tion of uncongenial or uncommended or unaccepted motifs, 
themes, situations, and outcomes on the other, must be left 
to the individual writer. Conscience, especially the true 
artistic conscience, will be his safest guide, and will, if 
he have it in sufficient degree, protect him from over- 
yielding to the temptations and constraints of the literary 
manufacturing industry. 

18. Giving all these considerations due weight, we 
come to that assertion which is of most practical importance 
to the student seeking knowledge that he can turn to use 
in the writing of stories. This is, that his decision upon 
a plot, and his selection of materials wherewith to develop 
his story, should be determined by his familiarity and 
lack of familiarity with the facts that will be involved in 
presenting the story so conceived and planned. The noblest 
conception, the most dramatic plot, the finest literary art 
in the construction and setting forth of the story, will 
be but as a mirage in the desert unless given substance and 
reality by adequate information. The author must know 
what he is writing about — and the emphasis is here on 
KNOW and not on what. ISTo one can write effectively 
in any but a superficial and general way about that with 
which he is not familiar. This sounds like a truism — and 



204 Short Stories in the Making 

it is. But people are often blind to the importance of 
truisms, and the tendency of inexperienced writers to at- 
tempt incidents, plots, situations, settings, and characters 
that are remote from their experience — about which they 
in truth have only vague impressions and smattering in- 
formation — is so strong that the danger lying in it calls for 
emphatic presentation. 

19. The reason why familiarity with the particular sort 
of scene, persons, and acts to be depicted, is necessary to 
the author — why he cannot depend merely on his general 
knowledge of men and affairs — is plain. Because in his 
story he must show forth life in appropriate concrete 
forms, and because this cannot be done from merely general 
knowledge, the writer must know his people and places 
with an all-round knowledge that includes details as well 
as general facts. Were story-writing but the finding of 
a general human motive for action that is more or less 
abstractly conceived, the story-dramatist could get along 
with a general stock of information about human nature 
and stock character traits. But story-writing is no such 
thing. It succeeds only when it bodies forth its conceptions 
concretely and with variety of true detail. Therefore, 
it must know with extreme intimacy and fullness the facts 
with which it deals. To base a story on the general fact 
that men who are in love are likely to behave foolishly, it 
must go beyond the general idea of " men in love " ; it 
must pass on to the concrete of " this man " — a particular, 
individual man, millionaire, mechanic, or costermonger, 
handsome or ugly, manly or effeminate, honorable or 
treacherous, graceful or awkward, and so on. The million- 
aire in love will doubtless do just as foolish things as the 
costermonger similarly deranged — but not always the 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 205 

same kinds of thing. Nor will he do them in the same 
sort of surroundings, nor before the same class of people ; 
neither will he and the people about him dress or speak 
as will the costermonger and his associates. A writer, 
therefore, whose knowledge of costermongers enabled him 
to do an excruciatingly humorous story of costermongers 
in love, might fail utterly in the same sort of story about 
millionaires in love, unless he knew millionaires as thor- 
oughly as he knew costermongers. 

20. Evidently, every part of the narrative must be 
worked out down to details, with a fullness proportioned to 
its importance ; and in all important parts of the narrative 
these details are always concrete particulars of such specific 
sort as makes them thoroughly representative of the 
persons, the kinds of character, the locale, the occupation 
and social rank, the habits, customs, mannerisms, speech, 
and thought, with which the story seeks to deal. Unless 
the story be thus worked out in the concrete, it can scarcely 
be said to belong to fiction at all ; and unless the concrete 
particulars are true to the life, persons, places, occupations, 
and atmosphere that they seek to present, they fail the 
writer as a means of giving plausible outward form to 
his conception. Intimate familiarity with his materials, 
even down to minute detail, is indispensable in the produc- 
tion of consistent, convincing, and truly interpretive 
dramatic narrative. 

21. If from this the student does not realize the wisdom 
of getting out among men and mingling (though it be but 
as an observer) in their activities, we will not urge it on 
him; we will leave him to go on wondering why less 
studious, less scholarly, and less " educated " men, who do 
nothing but run about amongst folk, are " getting their 



206 Short Stories in the Making 

stuff over " so often ! But we know the reason. The ob- 
jectionable fellow who succeeds is rubbing elbows with 
life; he is getting " next " (Anglo-Saxon, "that which is 
closest to ") to life in the best way — by mingling with and 
becoming part of it. He is learning, not merely to look 
in from the outside, but to go inside and look out, and 
still more, to look about him while inside. Of course he 
can report life, for he knows it. When he wishes to give 
concrete form to any conception, he has an ever increasing 
store of observation and information from which to draw. 
The man of literary instincts who keeps himself " un- 
spotted from the world " in his own study, can perhaps 
succeed as poet, philosopher, historian or essayist, but 
seldom indeed can he succeed as dramatist or fiction- 
writer. For to succeed, he must have not only view-of-life, 
dramatic sense, and artistic impulse; he must have also 
such intimate and detailed knowledge of men and the world 
as will provide him concrete forms wherein to body life 
forth. The story-writer who does not make himself inti- 
mately familiar with the life he would present, is un- 
prepared either to conceive or to present it. Because he 
keeps himself unspotted from the world, he is more than 
likely to be unspotted by the world; for he cannot gain 
its attention by holding up before it what it wants to see 
— the concrete embodiment of itself in truly characteristic 
detail, imaginatively created by an artistic master. 

XXIV. Characterization Involves the Presenting 
of Human Traits, Class Attributes, and Per- 
sonal Traits and Mannerisms 

1. In turning again to the problems created by the 
presence of the character element in narrative, we will first 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 207 

repeat certain assertions amplified in section X. These 
are: 

A. Character is basic human nature shaped and modi- 
fied into particular traits and tendencies that are mani- 
fested in the behavior and conduct of the person. 

B. The second element in human character (human 
nature being the first) is temperament — the quality or dis- 
position peculiar to the individual. 

C. In the acts of men, which are that through which 
character becomes manifest, the element of reflective fore- 
sight is important — that quality wherein human action 
frequently differs from animal action. The existence of 
reflective foresight, releasing the person from purely 
automatic reactions, is what makes drama and fiction 
possible, for it is that which makes human motive possible 
and thus creates conflict and struggle. Fiction is interest- 
ing largely because it shows us man employing, or failing 
to employ, his reflective foresight in critical situations. 10 

D. Character in the individual is the sum of his moral, 
intellectual, and physical instincts, feelings, tendencies, 
qualities, and habits, resulting from the union in him of 
human nature and temperament. 

To these we may now add: 

E. Single acts and speeches are not sure revealers of 
character; neither is psychological analysis (or narration) 
of thought and motive (recounting events of the " stream 
of consciousness"). Single acts and speeches are seldom 
conclusive, although they may be very significant; they 
throw light on, but do not fully discover, character. Char- 

10 We must not understand that the employment of reflection is 
always necessary on the part of the person. His very failure 
to reflect may be the backbone of his comedy or tragedy. 



208 Short Stories in the Making 

acter is completely and conclusively revealed only by con- 
duct — the sum and outcome, under thoroughly testing 
conditions, of the persons reflection, emotion, impulse, and 
acts. Action not clearly the result of predominating traits 
and motives that will always produce like conduct under 
similar conditions, is inconclusive. 

F. Single acts (or series of single acts) are produced 
by either (a) reason, (b) feeling, or (c) impulse. In (a) 
and (b), will is present ; the person chooses his act through 
reason or through emotional influences. But in (c), the 
act is instinctive rather than determined. 11 As, however, 
conduct is the result and sum of single acts, the three 
sources of our acts are likewise the three sources of con- 
duct. Therefore, conduct is either (a) reasoned or (b) 
not reasoned. 

G. We can now proceed to another classification. Acts 
that are — 

(a) indicative merely of human nature will always tend 
to be purely instinctive or emotional. 

(b) indicative of class characteristics will usually be 
instinctive or emotional, growing out of settled 
class motives, customs, and feelings ; but these may 
at times be reasoned upon more deliberately than 
those of basic human nature are likely to be. 

(c) indicative of the individual temperament may be 
either instinctive, or emotional, or reflective. 

2. This last classification (G) brings us to the asser- 

11 Feeling is often the source of impulse. But as our classification 
is otherwise helpful, and as it works effectively for our purposes, 
we will be pragmatically satisfied with it, noting merely that 
feeling sometimes is subjected to reason and sometimes is impulsively 
obeyed. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 209 

tion that the individual traits, qualities, and mannerisms 
are those which most prominently appear in characteriza- 
tion, and therefore call for the largest amount of direct 
attention from the writer. These traits and habits must 
appear most prominently because, were it otherwise, the 
persons would be no more than stock persons, not individ- 
uals ; and hence the main value of characterization — show- 
ing life in its multitude of variations — would be lost. Did 
a writer present a person in whose character only the basic 
elements of human nature showed, he would present an 
abstraction, and his fiction would therefore become an 
allegory, a mere piece of narrative exposition such as 
Pilgrims Progress is. The same would be the case to 
almost as great an extent did he present us merely a type, 
or unindividualized representative, of the lawyer, the 
doctor, the cook, the priest, of the explorer, the home- 
stayer, the lover, the achiever, and so on through all the 
class categories. But the universal characteristics, or even 
the characteristics common to any particular class, are not 
those that primarily give life its endless daily interest 
through its variety and consequent uncertainty. The pos- 
session of individual traits and character qualities, of in- 
dividual habits and mannerisms — this it is that makes men 
keep on interesting other men from day to day and 
generation to generation. To present a stock personage, 
a mere typeman, is not supremely difficult. But to present 
a thoroughly individualized person under whose individ- 
uality is yet to he perceived the class and the race traits, is 
no easy task. And this is the task of the fiction writer. 

3. A further word of explanation may here be useful. 
The basic traits of human nature do not offer in themselves 
matters of sufficient interest for repeated presentation; 



210 Short Stories in the Making 

they are too few. The primary instincts and emotions 
make no extensive list. Hunger, sexual passion, fear, 
anger — a few categories such as these will cover all that is 
primarily an element in human nature. Even affection 
for offspring seems to be largely a developed instinct; so 
that, although we now regard it as fundamental among 
civilized peoples, it in fact represents a considerable stage 
of advancement; many tribes show it but sporadically, 
and possibly we shall not exaggerate greatly if we assert 
that among beasts the dam sometimes shows it more con- 
clusively than do twentieth-century mothers (individual 
instances are of course what is meant). Such facts as 
these, by the way, illustrate our thought, that it is the 
individual variations rather than the fundamental nature 
that produces the uncertainty and immediate interest of 
life. The same generalizations are true about class char- 
acteristics : 12 the distinctive class traits are few, and were 
it not that many men of many temperaments possess them 
in common, would afford little more than a formula for 
the writer — an unchanging pattern on which all his char- 
acters would of necessity be shaped. What life actually 
affords, however, is countless characters founded upon 
human nature and more or less also upon class traits, but 
showing forth innumerable variations of this human nature 
and class attribute brought about by the innumerable varia- 
tions in the conditions of environment and in the many 
other natural causes that are productive of individual 

12 The student will observe that class traits represent individualiz- 
ing influences operating upon entire groups alike. The group thus 
becomes individualized from the rest of mankind, and therefore, 
after this has occurred, the individual traits of its individual mem- 
bers stand in the same relation to the collective traits of the class 
as to basic human nature. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 211 

temper. Hence, it is only when the character portrayed 
is true, first to human nature, then to class form, 13 and 
finally, to a clearly conceived individual temperament such 
as is logically produced by the determining causes of varia- 
tion, that we get individuality, or personality, the quality 
so indispensable to complete characterization. And again, 
therefore, we must point out the necessity of knowing not 
only man, but men ; for nothing else will supply that store 
of understanding out of which the author can conceive 
characters that not only are true to race and class, but 
also show infinite human variety. 

4. We come then to this counsel. In characterizing, 
think rather negatively than positively of race and group 
traits, but very positively of individual traits; make cer- 
tain that the materials selected do not violate the funda- 
mental truth of human nature and class attribute, but 
make equally certain that the materials selected do present 
a clearly conceived and clearly individualized person 
having a personality, a character, all his own. This, of 

1 8 In actual writing, the author not infrequently finds that class 
attribute may be safely disregarded; only at times does class 
characteristic become important. There are, for instance, many 
situations that can as well be worked out with a preacher or a 
gambler as the central person, as with a lawyer or an engineer. 
The conte is less likely than the longer forms of narrative fiction 
to give extended attention to class trait, because its space precludes 
much portrayal of character purely for the sake of portrayal. Even 
in the most concentrated short-story treatment, however, the preacher 
and the gambler must be true to type except in those cases in 
which the story arises wholly or in part from their being untrue 
to type — and then class trait is presented in contrast merely. The 
point of this comment is, then, that class attribute cannot be under- 
taken solely for its own sake in the short story, except in cases of 
special character aim and purpose, when the story itself depends on 
the class character. 



212 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

course, advises no actual disregard of the more general and 
basic characteristics, but suggests rather the proportionate 
emphasis that each should receive; for it is unlikely that 
any conception of individual character, if true to life in the 
elements that give it individuality, will be untrue to life 
in fundamentals. The single character imagined from 
intimate and accurate observation of the motives, acts, and 
action of men, can. scarcely fail to be true to the more 
basic facts of human nature. Accurate reporting will 
take care of this. Yet lest these assertions result even yet 
in misapprehension, let us set down again that the merely 
individual character — that failing in its individuality also 
to represent mankind and class — is scarcely worth depict- 
ing ; at best, it can be but one of the curiosities of literary 
portraiture, a member of the gallery of freaks, and it is 
still more likely to be merely a nullity and " nixnutz." 14 
5. Before considering specifically some of the means of 
presenting character, we may speak briefly of the attitude 
taken by the author toward the person he is depicting. 
Two attitudes are possible: the author may assume an 
attitude of personal judgment and interpretation toward 
his creation, or he may merely put it forth, then leave 
it to get understanding and win favor or dislike from 
the reader for itself. In letting appear his own feeling 
toward or judgment of the character, he will find disad- 
vantage along with advantage. Perhaps the advantage lies 
chiefly in two things. By letting his opinion of the 

14 When the author's purpose is, to portray the class, not the 
individual — to make the person a personification of a type, or the 
embodiment of some general trait — the procedure is reversed. The 
individuality of the character is then minimized, and the person 
transformed into a symbolical or allegorical figure by emphasis of 
the general traits. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing- 213 

character be seen, the author can readily indicate his view 
of life; yet just for this reason, authors — young authors 
especially — laboring under the belief that their " message " 
must be conveyed directly and obviously, are likely to over- 
do their approval or disapproval — as are older writers 
also who are more fired with zealotry than possessed by 
an artistic appreciation of life, or who permit themselves 
to become enamored of or displeased by the persons of 
their story. Second, by distinctly notifying the reader how 
the author regards the person, the author gives incompetent 
understandings a push in the direction he wishes them 
to take. 

6. But probably most readers prefer to appreciate the 
character for themselves ; certainly this is true of the more 
cultured reader, unless the author's exposition of the 
character be redeemed by some extrinsic quality, such for 
instance as Thackeray's genial sarcasm. The reader gets 
interest out of reaching an understanding of the person 
by employing his own faculties and judgment, and there 
is loss of zest when he finds himself served with a meal of 
predigested character breakfast-food. Moreover, when the 
attitude of the author becomes sentimentally admiring or 
antagonistically bitter, readers are likely to feel down- 
right dissatisfaction — the more so because often in such 
instances the author's ability in character portrayal proves 
less than his facility in maudlin approval or intolerant 
condemnation. 

7. Finally, we must reflect that in the conte the space 
allowable for direct or explicit expression of the author's 
point of view, is small indeed. Unless he can indicate 
his attitude by means of quick epithet, of adjectives, ad- 
verbs, and phrases of characterization that imply rather 



214 Short Stories in the Making 

than assert opinion, giving it by subjective coloring rather 
than by any obvious means — in brief, unless by suggestion 
he can convey without obtrusiveness the view he holds, he 
can seldom with safety attempt such an expression in the 
short story. In the novel he could do it and, if his atti- 
tude and philosophy proved worth while, command atten- 
tion thereby. But the limitations of the short story in this 
respect are far stricter than are those of the novel. Yet 
the short-story writer is not without means even for 
direct presentation of character estimates. He can make 
the persons in his story express, by both word and deed, 
their judgment of their fellow-persons. By this means and 
by skillful suggestion otherwise, the skillful author will be 
fully able to embody in his narrative his personal estimate 
of any character without at all thrusting himself into the 
story to do it. But even when all is said, the facts, ac- 
curately reported, remain the best means of revealing the 
beauty or ugliness, the worthiness or univorthiness, of any 
character, and no adequately portrayed person in fiction 
will be seriously misjudged by competent readers, even 
though the author s attitude toward him be left wholly 
unrevealed. 

XXV. " Character " Implies an Original Concep- 
tion of a Person Having Definite Individuality ; 
Its Traits being Portrayed by Description, 
Analysis, Psychological Narration, and Espe- 
cially Act and Speech 

1. How is an individual character created in fiction? 
Is it copied from the character of some person — a repro- 
duction of an original? Many persons, even critics who 



Other Problems op Fiction-Writing 215 

might know better, seem to think so; for we find endless 
attempts going on to identify the " original " of this or 
that noted person of fiction. Yet even when there in fact 
is an original, the copying is always so free — the suppres- 
sion of traits that are present in the original, the addition 
of traits not present in the original, and the placing of 
emphasis upon certain traits in preference to others — all 
this is so common, as to make most copies nothing but 
highly idealized derivatives of the original character. 
When scientific biography gets to work upon these 
" copies," it nearly always proves that the most which the 
fictional presentation accomplishes is, to give a suggestive, 
but not an accurate, portrayal — to show what the person 
copied might have been, but not what he was. Art, in 
fiction or out of it, cannot produce copies of actual things; 
it must adapt, modify, and indeed build entirely anew. 

2. Yet the conte is better adapted to the copying of 
actual character than is the novel. The short story must 
confine itself to some dominant trait, or at most to a few 
prominent traits; all beyond this it must either exclude 
or merely hint at and suggest. True, in the best artistry, 
this hinting will be so managed as to give the reader the 
impression of character completeness; it will make him 
see the character in perspective, with the least possible 
amount of that distortion which must follow the emphasiz- 
ing of but a single trait or small group of traits. Even 
so, however, it cannot attain to complete character presen- 
tation. But because one of its legitimate and necessary 
methods is, thus to select out and deal with some dominant 
element of character, relegating the many modifying and 
accompanying elements to relative obscurity, the short story 
can upon occasion more successfully base itself thus upon 



216 Short Stories in the Making 

some prominent trait in an actual person, than can the 
ampler novel; and bj selecting also the environment and 
incident appertaining to this person in actual life, it can 
thus produce a " copy " of the " original " that will be 
effective. Yet even the short story, in making this repro- 
duction of an actual character, must omit, tone down, tone 
up, and otherwise manipulate, modify, and idealize the 
facts in accordance with the requirements of dramatic plot 
and artistic impression. Moreover, because the presenta- 
tion of the actual person so made will emphasize but a 
single element of his character, it will, even when more 
suggestive than that given by the novel, be if anything even 
less complete and broadly adequate as a true presentation 
of the actual man. We are forced to concede, therefore, 
that in fiction the creation of a character can not be ac- 
complished through the copying of characters actually 
known in individual men and women. 

3. This, however, is fortunate, not only for the author, 
but for the world that depends — more perhaps than it- 
suspects — upon the interpretations of literature for an 
understanding of men and character. For although every 
character in literature is, in some degree at least, a con- 
crete, individual character belonging to a distinct, individ- 
ual person; yet in that character every element and trait 
is an element and trait that belongs to human nature and 
human temperament, and is to be found somewhere in 
the characters of actual men and women. But these ele- 
ments will not be found always in the same groupings, 
or in the same degrees, or in the same circumstances ; and 
it is the opportunity and task of fiction to know these 
manifold characteristics of men and man, to bring them 
to light, and to exhibit them in their inherent quality. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 217 

Further, to effect new combinations of them in imagined 
characters, to try their effect upon men and the affairs of 
men in different degrees and different combinations and 
different circumstances, falls also to the fiction-writer. 
Whereas copying would restrict him to the mere setting 
forth of character elements in only that degree, those com- 
binations and circumstances, in which he might have a 
chance to observe them actually existent in actual persons, 
character creation on the other hand calls upon him to do 
a far more pleasant and far more profitable thing. In 
character creation, he is to handle the elements and traits 
of character with the freedom of an experimenter charged 
with the duty of finding new proportions, new combina- 
tions, new conditions, and new results, by means of his 
expert knowledge and expert skill. He works as the 
chemist works in seeking new and useful compounds and 
products, or as the botanist works in seeking to produce 
new varieties and determine the behavior of plants in 
widely variant conditions, or as the practical philanthropist 
works who seeks to bring about in individual men a new 
combination and proportion of qualities, and an adjust- 
ment of surroundings, in order that he may create a new 
character in the individual man. 

4. Character creation, therefore, consists (1) in the 
selection and combination in due proportion of certain 
traits, elements, or qualities of human character; (2) in 
making these consistent with basic human nature and 
class character; (3) in making them also significant of 
some particular phase or phases of human nature (and 
perhaps of class character) • and (J/.) in addition to this, 
in embodying them in concrete acts, mannerisms, speech, 
and conduct that will impress the reader as belonging to a 



218 Short Stories in the Making 

distinct and individual personality. The actual process of 
this selection and combination may go on in different ways. 
One may (A) begin by determining the particular phase 
or quality of human nature that he wishes to interpret. 
He then seeks acts, conduct, situations, and speech, to- 
gether with appropriate setting and other environment, 
such as best agree with and express this phase and 
quality. Or he may (B) begin with certain mannerisms, 
acts, or behavior, and from these determine the aspect of 
human nature, and conceive the character, that his story 
must present; his principal task thereafter being, to pro- 
vide a sufficient body of such acts, conduct, and speech ade- 
quately to display this aspect. Or again, he may (C) 
begin with the conception of a particular setting, environ- 
ment, atmosphere, or situation, deciding from this upon 
that aspect of human nature and those qualities of per- 
sonality which he must present, and upon the concrete 
acts, conduct, and speech necessary to this presentation. 15 
There may be other ways of determining character, and 
the means of expressing it ; but the three here mentioned 
are the commonest. 

5. The conception, therefore, of the character to be 
portrayed, may often determine the choice of persons to 
appear in and carry on the action. For we need know 
the world but moderately well to know that types of 
character frequently associate themselves with types of in- 
dividual. Brutality is characteristic of ignorance; gross 
luxury and barbaric display are associated with the self- 
sculptured person who is an artist only in the rough and 

16 Setting and environment, but especially setting, are more likely 
to influence the selection of class than they are to enter into the 
determination of character in other respects, 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 219 

has devoted more attention to the multiplication of riches 
than to the polishing off of his self-hewn character ; bigotry 
accompanies membership in any class educated through 
dogmatic precept and not through development of the 
reason — which fact accounts for the frequency with which 
literature has coupled intolerance with certain scholastic, 
legal, and clerical types of person. On the other hand, 
there are qualities of human nature and temperament that 
cannot be associated with any particular type of person, 
but are widely distributed among all types, and perhaps 
are universal. Pity is found in the rich and the poor r the 
coarse and the refined; hatred and affection characterize 
every class; honor and treachery may be found in the 
soldier, the priest, the merchant, the prostitute; there are 
stupid professors and lightning-witted ditchers. The more 
deeply the quality is rooted in basic nature, the more 
universal it will be. We conclude, therefore, that although 
our choice of actors in the story may sometimes be guided 
or even determined by the character type to be portrayed, 
yet nevertheless the more the character quality belongs 
to fundamental nature and the less it is adventitious — the 
result of special modifying and conditioning circumstances 
— the less surely will it associate itself exclusively with 
any particular type of person. The basic traits of man are 
to be found in every type and every individual. 

6. We have already emphasized the necessity of the 
fiction-writer's dealing with materials that are within his 
experience, avoiding scene, situation, person, character, 
and action, with which he is not familiar. But this neces- 
sity should be urged again here. Nowhere is ignorance — 
lack of intimate information — more fatal than in the at- 
tempt to present persons in character, and nowhere is 



220 Short Stories in the Making 

such ignorance so impossible of concealment. Without 
knowing man and men, the writer can never create persons 
who will move and live. Yet the frequency with which 
we find inadequate equipment in this indispensable quali- 
fication for dramatic narrative, is surprising. It is sur- 
prising because a writer needs not to know all the world 
and its " cities of men " — needs not to have traveled 
widely, to have lived a life of thrill, change, adventure, or 
far-extending activity himself. He will without this have 
sufficient opportunity for studying and learning men. We 
are forced to conclude, therefore, that many of the wish-I- 
were writers have not exercised their powers of observa- 
tion and sympathetic understanding, or indeed lack such 
powers ; so wof ully do they fail in comprehension and rep- 
resentation of human trait and mannerism. 

7. One of the most common manifestations of this hope- 
less lack of equipment is found in those stories that go far 
away from home — far outside the writer's range of experi- 
ence^ — for person, plot, or incident. The ambitious college 
girl, whose broad experience perhaps includes life in her 
home town in Maine, Iowa, or Colorado, and in the little 
" city " where the state university or woman's college is, 
with (perhaps) a flying visit to Boston or Chicago and one 
supreme occasion when she was guest at a " junior prom " 
in some man's college — this little lady must attempt a 
story of the Kiviera, of St. Petersburg (Kussia, not 
Florida!), of Hongkong or Mandalay; must undertake to 
show us Siberian exiles, Japanese naval officers, the in- 
habitants of some (largely imaginary) Chinatown; must 
try to build a plot of vast financial or political intrigue, 
of domestic infelicity in " high life," or adventure on the 
" high " seas, AH of which is pitifully an exhibition of 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 221 

poor judgment. For though it is true that the basic traits 
of human nature are the same always and everywhere, it is 
not true that the customs, manners, and mannerisms, the 
social conventions, the setting — all the endless range of 
those externals through which characterization must be 
achieved — it is not true that these things can be intuitively 
realized. The externals must be known, and known 
familiarly, if they are to be reported convincingly, 
and even a genius must be intimately acquainted with that 
multiplicity of accompanying detail through which alone 
the characteristic individuality of character, of setting, and 
of incident, can be established. 

8. Perhaps the college girl who has lived her twenty 
years with open eyes and interpreting heart can — if blessed 
of the gods — write a passable story of the things that 
might happen in her home town, or in the college. But she 
knows nothing of the habitues of the Riviera, of Russian 
grand dukes and princesses, of Siberian exiles, of Japanese 
naval officers, of the " four hundred " — nothing except that 
they are men and women. And lacking knowledge of 
them, she lacks the first essential to adequate reporting. 
It is inadequacy of information that gives us the stock 
Englishman who is an Englishman only because he litters 
up the floor with H's that he ought to be more careful of, 
and can't keep his monocle in his eye; the stock cowboy 
who is a cowboy because he yells whoopee ! swills whisky, 
and shoots up the town whenever he steps outdoors; the 
" darky " who is a darky because he says " Gorrymighty, 
massa " at every opportunity ; and other wooden-man crea- 
tions that have no individuality and about the same amount 
of human nature. The writer with an understanding of 
the nature of true characterization, will shun these stock 



222 Short Stories in the Making 

persons as he would the plague; and the writer with a just 
sense of the possible and impossible in characterization 
will undertake to present no character that calls for such 
setting, environment, incident, or other accompanying 
material as he is not sufficiently familiar with to report 
with convincing accuracy of detail. 

9. We have in the preceding paragraphs spoken of 
character and of the person possessing the character, as if 
they were identical. And this, for most practical pur- 
poses, they are. Hence in the succeeding paragraphs, 
wherein we now consider the means by which character 
traits are presented to the reader, w T e shall continue to 
speak of the character and the person as one. We pass, 
then, to this consideration. Our first observation is, that 
'physical description of the person may he utilized to sug- 
gest character. This function, indeed, is the main func- 
tion that description of persons can lay claim to in fiction. 
There is, to be sure, a limited interest merely in knowing 
that the hero is tall and dark and has curly hair, that 
the heroine is petite and " walks with a grace all her 
own/ 7 and even that the old farmer is lean and angular. 
But such information is too often of the unimportant-if- 
true sort, and with discriminating readers is scarcely of 
interest at all — certainly not when it represents only the 
callow writer's conception of her own appearance or the 
appearance of her wished-for sweetheart, as they might be 
if things were different. There must be a more command- 
ing reason for describing the person; and this justifying 
reason is found in some relation that always exists between 
personal appearance and essential character. This relation 
may be that of resemblance, or that of contrast; the out- 
ward aspect may be an index of the spirit within, or it 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 223 

may be one of those always startling physical incongruities 
reminding us that noble spirits may house in ignoble 
bodies, and fair bodies incase foul souls. 

10. Of the two relations, that based upon incongruity 
of the outer and the inner man is the less common and on 
the whole the less frequently available. Indeed, it is usable 
at all only because the other relationship, that of cor- 
respondence between the inner and the outer, is the rule. 
The fact that, even aside from conventional conceptions, 
the outer man so often bewrays the inner, gives an added 
effectiveness to characterizations in which the exception is 
presented. Incongruity thus becomes the method of 
delineations where sharply engraved outlines are desired — 
the effect of keen contrasts, with the resulting effect of 
pathos and tragedy or of humor, satire, or burlesque. The 
fat man full of sentimental love, the deformed woman 
full of deep and passionate affection for the man who loves 
the physically perfect in woman — figures like these, pre- 
sented adequately, must always move us deeply. But from 
the nature of the method, we find it best reserved for 
stories in which the effect of strong contrast is especially 
sought. 

11. But similarity between the inner and the outer is 
common enough in actual life, and has established itself so 
thoroughly in the technical conventions of art as to become 
the rule. When, therefore, contrast is not sought, the 
depicting of the outer man as corresponding with the 
inner is the natural method. The shrewd man has sharp 
features and small, sharp eyes; the prying person has a 
thin, pointed nose; the good-humored person has many 
little wrinkles at the corners of mouth and eyes; the big 
and leering mouth is the sign of foolishness ; shifting eyes 



p 



224' Short Stories in the Making 

betray the shifty spirit ; fingers that are never quiet speak 
of nerves that are never at rest; a swinging gait means 
independence — perhaps the independence of resolution and 
courage, perhaps the independence of carelessness and irre- 
sponsibility. There is truth in the popular song, " Every 
little movement has a meaning of its own." So has every 
line and attitude. He is indeed fortunate who has ob- 
served men and women to such purpose that their char- 
acter is revealed to him by trivial, yet all-significant, 
externals — to whom the significant external signs present 
themselves surely and naturally when he conceives a trait 
and portrays a character. For these things are not matters 
of downright invention, cannot be thought up or manu- 
factured. They lie in the natural relations existing be- 
tween man's body and his character. The outer bodies 
forth the inner. 

12. Description of the person of an actor, therefore — 
of his appearance, his mannerisms of physical expression 
and act; of the outward man that so suggestively cor- 
responds to the man within — can frequently be used ef- 
fectively toward characterizing the individual. Such 
description may be massed (but not without the disadvan- 
tages that attend massed description), or it may be dis- 
tributed; it may be given by the author directly, or be 
placed by him on the lips of some person in the story — 
even those of the person himself who is being character- 
ized; it may include only details, or it may include also 
a summarizing description that gathers up the details in 
a general estimate. Illustrations of direct description can 
be found everywhere; the books on rhetoric, narration, 
description, and fiction-writing abound with them. A 
single example must serve here : 



c^<\ 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 225 

Tall, he was, and queerly suggestive of a spinning- 
top turned upside down and fitted with legs ; for his head 
was small and pointed, and hinted, moreover, of being as 
hard as the iron peg of the top ; and the loose and modish 
topcoat in which he had encased himself, hung on narrow 
shoulders, but below flared out with the brazen independ- 
ence of fad-bold styles. Had Eanger been less colossal in 
height and diameter, he would have resembled an overgrown 
gnome, tubby and rotund in the middle, making his uncer- 
tain way on teetering legs. Yet there was physical strength 
in the man notwithstanding his ill proportions. The long 
arms looked as if they had been practiced in reaching out 
and seizing, or in giving tremendous blows. The bulbous 
body looked as if it were able to remain inert against great 
pressure, giving stability to the uncertain legs, and the 
head looked as if by sheer repeated pecking it might pierce 
a way through stone-wall obstacles. Only when you looked 
into the eye — which was hard to catch — did you see that 
the dwindling legs and the pindling cranium might be 
truer indexes of the man's character than were his fusi- 
form globularity, his mass, his height, his prehensible arms 
and hammer fists, and his head with its shape of the steel- 
nosed bullet. 

13. Another direct means of characterizing is that of 
frank analysis. Analysis, however, is closely akin to ex- 
pository writing; and to say this is enough to warn the 
tempted writer that forbearance is better than indulgence 
when he entertains any doubt about the advisability of 
employing this method. Further, since exposition grows 
disproportionately obvious as it grows longer, passages 
of analysis must needs be short — particularly so in the 



226 Short Stories in the Making 

conte. It is better to break the passage up into smaller 
portions of analysis or explanation, and distribute these 
at opportune places in the story, than to permit the analysis 
to grow unwieldy in a single longer passage. What is 
here said, however, does not imply that one shall fail to 
give a key to the character early in the presentation, even 
though many of the doors to full appreciation of it be left 
for later unlocking. Neither does it imply that occasions 
will not arise where outright analysis will not be, all 
things considered, the best method — as when a person must 
be shown in action without sufficient precedent opportunity 
to develop by other means that trait of character which 
must be understood in order to understand the motive with 
which he is now to act, or when subordinate persons must 
be characterized whose importance is too slight to justify 
the more dramatic methods of presenting their character. 
We scarcely need add that, when either description or 
analysis seems to be required in mass, the best places for 
it are the points of lowered interest in the narrative — the 
troughs between the wave-crests of action. To break into 
the action-movement, stopping it in order to describe or 
analyze, is crude and often fatal malpractice. A brief 
passage of analysis is here given, to illustrate concretely 
this method of direct characterization: 

His was a soul that thrived upon black tempers fol- 
lowed by hysterical melancholy. Between these black 
storm periods, with their sequence of penitential rains, he 
was blithe, indifferent, chirpy, moody, active, quiescent, as 
chance decreed. But these intervening moods were merely 
the fortuitous variations of his spiritual year, and had no 
fixed relations with his full seasons ; sullen rage and equi- 



Other Problems of Fiction- Writing 227 

noctial remorse were his spring, summer, autumn, and 
winter of emotion, and swayed all lesser periods, as spring, 
summer, autumn, and winter dominate all the minor epochs 
of the solar year. 

14. Yet neither description nor analysis is the writer s 
best dependence. On act and deed only — on the action of 
the individual — can be founded dramatic characterization. 
Description and analysis are but accessories and aids to 
this higher method. We best perceive that a man is quick- 
tempered when we see him "fly off the handle " and do 
something in hasty anger. We need no explanation to 
make us know that a woman is treacherous if we see her 
wantonly betraying a friend. The clerk seen appropriat- 
ing a package from the shelves is classified by his act ; the 
boy who takes a thrashing to save a weaker lad from too 
severe punishment, wears a Carnegie medal to our eyes 
without its being pinned on him by an analysis of his 
courage and sympathy. The man whom we find sitting in 
his club, telling unclean stories — we know the fullness of 
his heart from the speech of his mouth, as we do that of 
his brother the other loafer who tells the same stories in 
the country store. The patient response of a husband to 
the nagging of his wife, characterizes him as much as her 
nagging speeches characterize her. All this but says that 
act and speech dramatically reveal character as nothing 
else can do. Therefore, the writer has endless opportunity 
to achieve varied dramatic characterization; for as the 
variations of character and temper, and the number of 
convincing combinations of them, is infinite, so the number 
and hinds of act and speech through which character can be 
portrayed, are infinite. The act and the manner of the act, 



228 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

whether one drive a dagger to his enemy's heart or flick a 
fly from his own bald head, are the best revelation of char- 
acter — and I do not know that any degree-pursuing research 
enthusiast has yet had the brilliantly barren impulse to 
look up just how many ways there are of doing either. 

15. We cannot close this section without speaking of 
one other means of indicating, more or less directly, the 
character of the actor — psychological narration. Psycho- 
logical narration is found most extensively in the so-called 
psychological story, but it is likely to be useful anywhere, 
the danger of employing it lying in the ease with which in- 
ternal action can displace external action in the narrative. 
Psychological narration sometimes is hard to discriminate 
from psychological analysis, but it is, in its clearest forms, 
distinctly separate. It consists in narrating, or recounting, 
mental and spiritual operations, and its justification lies 
in the fact that no external act can intelligibly express 
some of the significant operations of intellect, impulse, 
mood, and spirit through which acts and conduct are de- 
termined. Unless, therefore, the psychological events be 
narrated that constitute these operations, they cannot be 
presented in any dramatic or even pseudo-dramatic way. 
To narrate thus the incidents that make up the stream of 
consciousness, is to reveal motive by revealing the hidden 
springs whose release sets going outward events. Hence it 
reveals character, at least indirectly, since motive results 
from character. The beginning writer, however, should 
use no more psychological narration than he finds himself 
compelled to use, and should admit it only in short and 
well-distributed passages. 16 

16 Naturally, the longer the story, the longer the passages of 
description, analysis, psychological narration, and the like, that can 
be introduced. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 229 

XXVI. Dialogue Lightens, the Narrative, Con- 
tributes to Exposition and Intensification, 
Furthers Action, and Characterizes 

1. In contemporary short fiction, dialogue is prominent ; 
sometimes it displaces all the other means of presentation, 
and the story becomes still more nearly a play — conver- 
sation constituting all the story and suggesting even the 
" business " of the actors. The increasing prominence of 
dialogue has been an accompaniment of the general im- 
provement of narrative method; for dialogue has been 
found not only to have a function particularly its own in 
fictional narrative, but also an ancillary function, relieving 
the heaviness and monotony sometimes attending narration 
even when concerned immediately with action. Experi- 
ence has demonstrated the usefulness of dialogue in 
lightening the narrative, contributing expository or inten- 
sifying detail, advancing the action, and indicating the 
character of the persons, 

2. The usefulness of conversation in lightening the 
narrative is evident. A steady flow of purely historical 
assertion must sooner or later grow monotonous, and 
readers of fiction find this especially true. Probably there 
is, consciously or unconsciously, the reasoning that in 
life itself men speak freely about themselves and their 
affairs, and that fiction ought to represent them as they are 
in life — the more so as the ebb and flow of converse in 
actual life goes so far toward making it interesting and 
explaining the motives and character of men to one an- 
other. The occurrence, therefore, of passages of dialogue 
in a fiction narrative makes the presentation seem more 



230 Short Stoeies in the Making 

dramatic (in both senses of the word), breaks up long 
historical statement into livelier and briefer form, makes 
reading easier to the eye, makes the humanity of the 
fictional persons more apparent, enables the reader to 
get illuminating glimpses of character without the need 
of wallowing through explanatory mud puddles, and — in 
a word — brings the story closer in form, method, and 
matter to the realities of life. 

3. Yet numerous good stories are told without the em- 
ployment of dialogue ; for to some narratives it is not 
essential, and some successful authors have no gift in 
dialogue. We are to remember that there is no hard-and- 
fast rule of fiction-writing — that the author's conception 
and the material which it calls on him to present may at 
any time produce a new set of conditions, to meet which 
he may have to do even the exact opposite of the rule, 
and that his success will be determined by the significance 
of the conception and the skill with which he meets the 
conditions created by it. Good stories are written in 
which dialogue is not required at all, or in which it is 
avoided. But this does not lessen the importance of the 
counsel : when the speech of persons needs to be reported at 
all, it is usually best reported in direct dialogue form, 
not as indirect discourse; and for the sake of variety, 
vigor, and naturalness in the narrative, effort should be 
made to include dialogue whenever its presence will not 
interfere with more important ends. This can be summed 
up in the advice to use dialogue freely when the require- 
ments of the story will permit it. 

4. The utility of conversation as a means of indicating 
the premises on which the plot depends — that is, of present- 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 231 

ing exposition 17 — is very great in the hands of a competent 
story-teller and dramatist. In the hands of the unskilled, 
it is a doubtful means. Exposition given through dialogue, 
is almost of necessity distributed, not massed ; very seldom 
does a long passage of expository dialogue succeed. 18 At 
its best, it is usually not better than massed direct exposi- 
tion would be, and as conversation it wants naturalness, 
spontaneity, and lightness — is not true to the nature of 
ordinary conversation, which seldom goes back of the 
present moment or attempts a massed resume such as the 
massed exposition must be. But if care be exercised to 
keep the speeches from growing too long, to keep the 
conversation from monotonously over-dwelling on the ex- 
pository facts, and in such way to couple the statement of 
the expository facts with the situation and incidents of the 
moment that the reader feels a situation to be developing 
in the present and at the same time revealing to him the 
past out of which it springs — then dialogue becomes a 
thoroughly satisfactory vehicle of exposition. ' 

5. Exposition of the results of the outcome — conse- 
quential exposition — can likewise be given, either directly 
or by suggestion, through dialogue. When Hotspur, al- 

" Presentation of setting and environment, and indeed many 
of the effects of atmosphere, can be worked through dialogue. Setting 
and environment may at this point be regarded (for practical 
purposes) as included in exposition. The employment of dialogue for 
the creation of atmosphere scarcely permits of separate treatment. 
The effect of atmosphere will result from the subjective coloring 
found no less in the substance and manner of dialogue than in the 
other elements of the story. 

18 For a long speech of exposition that does succeed, see the 
opening of CoppeVs The Substitute. But note that the manner of 
the speech is not notably successful; the expression is over-sophisti- 
cated and over-mature for a mere boy. 



232 Short Stories in the Making 

luding to something else just said about the hazard of 
certain action that is as full of risk as crossing a torrent 
" on the uncertain footing of a spear/' bursts forth with 
the vivid comment, "If he fall off, good night ! " his 
speech amounts to consequential exposition; the failure 
of this undertaking will mean ruin. Consequential exposi- 
tion, however, is less likely to appear, for the simple reason 
that most plots reveal sufficiently, without explanation, 
what the after-results of their outcome will be — although 
in comedy the fun may sometimes be intensified by allusion 
to these results. Indeed, either comedy effect or tragic sus- 
pense can be heightened by such allusions, provided that 
they are introduced in such manner as not to anticipate 
the outcome itself. As comprehension of the consequential 
results is necessary to appreciation of the complication and 
crisis, and as in the management of the story they associate 
themselves naturally with the complication rather than 
with the outcome that would produce them, the skillful 
writer can accomplish this revelation successfully without 
letting the reader know prematurely how the struggle is to 
turn. And dialogue is one means to this end. 

6. Again, dialogue is useful as a means of intensifying 
mood-impression or emphasizing important facts. In so 
using it, however, caution is necessary. Conversation 
cannot be utilized merely by flinging it into the narrative ; 
it must be rooted deep in the incident, must take place 
because at the moment nothing but the breaking into 
speech will so adequately agree with the situation. It 
never does to say, " I will now use some dialogue to lighten 
things up and throw emphasis on these few facts." If 
the dialogue does not spring naturally from the situation, 
it is not to be admitted ; and if it grows long without in 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 233 

some way aiding the progress of the story, it must be 
excluded, even though its concentrative effect is good. If 
this seem too strong an assertion, let us say that concentra- 
tive, or amplifying, dialogue must never be permitted to 
interfere with advance in the movement of the story. 

7. And the sentence with which we have just closed the 
preceding paragraph recalls what must always be, from 
the viewpoint of dramatic construction, the main object of 
the story : advance. The story must always march forward, 
with only those halts and campings that are necessary for 
recuperation and survey of route before another advance. 
In the furthering of the action which is thus described, 
dialogue may have an important part. Study of stories in 
which conversation is prominent will quickly make evident 
what is meant by advancing the story through dialogue. 
At the close of the dialogue passage, a motive has been 
settled, a complication revealed or resolved, a determination 
reached, or some other condition established, without which 
the incidents could not proceed at all, or could not proceed 
so directly, toward the decisive moment, the climactic 
height, or the outcome. 

8. As intimated already, there are situations of which 
only dialogue is the natural expression and resolution; 
the action has come to a point where the persons must 
speak — must express themselves, their character, their 
mood, their motives, their determinations, by words. 
Speech is one form of action — a form in which motive, 
character, will, cause and effect, the final and decisive 
play of the motivating forces, are often seen in rapid and 
conclusive working. Thus in Markheim, most of the 
action is in the dialogue (psychological narration) ; " An- 
thony Hope" made the Dolly Dialogues mainly out of 



234 Short Stories in the Making 

dialogue — so much so that they seem almost stage-drama 
instead of narrative drama. Examples of dialogue (single 
speeches or interchange of speech) that constitutes or 
furthers action can be found in many stories ; the student 
has only to look over the short fiction in the current 
magazines, but specific citations of standard stories are: 
Barrie's The Courting of T'Now-head's Bell, Merimee's 
Mateo Falcone; Stevenson's A Lodging for the Night; 
Daudet's The Pope's Mule; and Kipling's Without Benefit 
of Clergy. (Kipling and O. Henry are among the authors 
who employ dialogue easily and much.) 

9. All the functions or employments of dialogue yet 
mentioned, however, are at least partly contributory; the 
dialogue is used as a device or means to some end not 
directly dependent on it, is accessory, ancillary, subordi- 
nate. It is, for example, useful in advancing the action, 
but is thus useful merely as a narrative and dramatic 
device, not primarily for its own sake. Has dialogue then 
no function that is distinctly and primarily its own? 
Must it always be employed as a servant of servants, never 
rising itself to the rank of a principal officer in the house- 
hold ? And if it indeed has some function that is eminently 
its own, what is that function ? It has such a special func- 
tion, the function is exceedingly important, and dialogue 
often performs it as it could be performed by no other 
narrative or dramatic agent. The function is, character- 
ization. 

10. Character can be laid before the reader in three 
ways; by outright explanation, by acts and deeds, and by 
speech — a form of action, but important enough to be 
considered by itself. Only those manifestations of charac- 
ter which are made through act or speech are truly dra- 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 235 

matic. Therefore, dialogue is one of the two sole methods 
by which inner character and motive can be made concrete 
and outwardly manifest. And as even the lightest and 
most inconsequential fiction, if it rises to worth in its own 
class, is based upon character as a premise — whether the 
story emphasize character or not — dialogue becomes one of 
the most important dependencies of the fiction writer. As 
such we will now consider it. 

11. " Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speak- 
eth." That is the foundation principle of dialogue as a 
means of characterization. And it holds universally. For 
even if the words uttered are false, the course of events 
in the story (which herein surely rises superior to actual 
life) will make their falseness manifest, and thus show 
the fullness of heart out of which they are spoken to be 
falsehood. Speech, therefore, associated with act and deed, 
should in fiction infallibly reveal character. And from 
this fact we draw two immediately applicable rules of 
practice for the writing of dialogue: A. Conceive with 
clearness the character that is to be presented, its essential 
traits and qualities. B. Build the dialogue directly upon 
this conception, putting such speech (and on the whole 19 

*• The restriction is far more important in short than in long 
fiction. In short fiction, only the "high lights" can be presented; 
the selective process has to be carried much further, and exclusion 
made much more strict, than in long narratives. The novel has 
time for bringing out what the photographer knows as detail. The 
metaphor is helpful. The conte is a snapshot; it can catch only 
the strongest outlines of the picture. But the novel is a time 
exposure, and can be so regulated as to get the detail that lies in 
shadow. Again, speed and a large lens aperture go with the 
snapshot, and this means lack of "depth"; but the time exposure, 
using a small, intensifying, perspectifying aperture, dwells more 
geeingly and Jingeringly on the subject, and has not only outline 



236 Short Stoeies in the Making 

only such speech) into the mouth of the person as springs 
from these traits and qualities, and serves, along with his 
acts, to reveal them clearly. 

12. For the creation of dialogue based upon character 
as moral quality, explicit directions (of course) cannot 
be given. How to perceive what substance and manner 
of speech will accord with any particular character trait 
and quality, is no more susceptible of being taught than is 
the process by which the author shall conceive the character 
itself. These are things that must depend on his powers of 
observation, his knowledge of men, and his sense of inner 
correspondences. The teacher can do no more than impress 
on the student the vital necessity that the speech of the 
person shall be consistent with, and more than that, shall 
be highly indicative of, the character with which that 
person has been endowed. When, however, we regard 
dialogue in its outward aspects — in its linguistic and not 
its moral or symbolical guise — we can state at least some 
general principles definitely enough to be laid hold on 
practically. 

13. Among these, the main or guiding principle is 

but shade and tone, background and depth, with many gradations 
of distinctness in the half and quarter lights and the shades. Yet 
again, in the development, the best that can be expected from the 
snapshot plate is such suggestion of full detail as prevents the 
negative from being merely a skeleton outline in which the shadows 
and their content show only as thin or bare spots. But in developing 
the time-exposed plate, such manipulation is possible as will coax up 
the shadows and bring forth a rich abundance of softening and 
contributory detail. In like degree, the short story (conte) may 
and should suggest the softening half-lights and shadow, with their 
accessory detail; but it cannot aim to develop these out in any 
degree of fullness. It has its own artistic aim, which is different 
from that of the timed picture; and it must confine itself to 
what that aim involves. 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 237 

that of individualized language — language made to fit 
the individual who uses it, and' the moment and situation 
when it is used. We begin with this in its most general 
sense, and say that speech must be fitted to represent the 
type of character and person with which it is associated. 
Frivolous character will produce frivolous speech ; religious 
character, conversation that is tinged with religion; 
rugged character, speech that is itself rugged. In like 
manner, different classes of person use different manners 
of speech. The lawyer is likely to have a speech that is 
involved and periodic, from the study of forms and books 
and from pleading before judges, or a more colloquial and 
plausible (and sometimes overbearing) manner, from 
questioning witnesses and addressing juries. There is — at 
least conventionally — a speech characteristic of the farmer ; 
the Hebrew cloaks-and-suits manufacturer certainly has 
his own style of expression, if Mr. Montague Glass's 
stories of Abe and Mawruss are to be taken as accurate. 
True, many of the " types " familiar to us are conven- 
tional ; true also that many influences are strongly at work 
to break down the differences in speech between class and 
class; and true yet again that the classifications overlap, 
grow confused, and become both arbitrary and indistinct. 
Even so, however, we find numerous quite apparent man- 
ners, or if you wish, dialects, characteristic of distinct 
groups. The Yankee villager, the Southern Cracker, the 
ranchman of the West, the seaman — mention of these is 
sufficient to convince us that there are manners of speech 
broadly belonging to one class or group of persons and not 
to any other. It is not necessary here to enumerate these 
classes; but when we come to write, it emphatically is 
necessary that we realize what form of speech is appropriate 



238 Short Stories in the Making 

to the type of person whom we are portraying, and place 
language in his mouth accordingly, 

14. Yet many things besides merely his membership 
in some more or less clearly distinct group will modify 
and determine the speech of any individual. The educated 
man (to illustrate) may be lawyer, clergyman, merchant, 
scientist, or mechanic; the mechanic may be Yankee, 
Southerner, French-Canadian, German- American ; the 
German- American may be grocer or editor ; the editor may 
be college bred or the product of life in a country town 
plus a scramble upward from the job of printers' devil. 
A thousand influences may shape language as spoken by the 
individual, modifying it and making it to vary from the 
type-language of his class ; and the fiction-writer, in por- 
traying person and character, must thus individualize the 
speech that he causes his persons to speak, just as he 
must individualize those persons themselves. Here again 
his safest — indeed, his only safe — guide must be, close 
observation and acquaintance with varied types and in- 
dividuals. Nevertheless, we can catalogue some of the in- 
fluences that help to determine the language of the 
individual person. 

15. First, a mans past is always perceptible in his 
speech. The farm-boy may become the city man, rising to 
eminence as journalist, banker, or lawyer; yet a few at 
least of the traces of an unlettered boyhood will always 
remain; he is likely to mispronounce a few words that 
he mislearned, and to employ now and then some turn of 
phrase more notable for rusticity than for grammatical 
correctness or rhetorical purity ; the very care and precision 
with which he handles his later language is reminiscent of 



Other Problems of Fiction- Writing 239 

days when he spoke with less finish and care; and in a 
larger sense, his language will be colored by his past 
through the fund of rural figure and illustration with 
which his early life has supplied him. A " Bowery Boy " 
— albeit " there ain't no sich annymile " now — though 
risen to be political master of a state, will yet speak much 
in the dialect of his origins. Even as early as the age 
of ten or twelve, the lad who has been acquainted inti- 
mately with books will have a finish and correctness of 
speech that will not wholly disappear, even should later 
circumstances turn him into foreman of a street-gang 
(though, if he have the quality of survival, he is likely 
then to acquire for practical purposes a language far from 
bookish !) . 

16. Offsetting this, a mans present also affects his 
speech. Thus, his occupation surely and persistently in- 
fluences his language, supplying him subjects of conversa- 
tion, determining the matter and direction of his thought, 
insinuating into his vocabulary the terms and cant of his 
business, and otherwise making him speak after its own 
manner. Occupation, however, is merely one aspect of 
environment; and to greater or less extent, environment 
inevitably constrains the speaker's speech. If he be in 
surroundings that are natural and easy to him, he speaks 
in the main the language peculiar to that environment; 
if it be unnatural or uneasy to him, his natural form of 
speech will feel the constraint and suffer from it; but 
always he speaks the speech in no small part as it is 
taught him by molding circumstances. Again, the 
speaker's mood, be it temporary or more deep-seated, will 
color and shape his expression. The angry bricklayer does 



240 Short Stories in the Making 

not speak as does the bricklayer in good humor ; the morose 
man, embittered against his work, the people about him, 
or the world in general, will reveal his bitterness in his 
words, his sentences, his conversations. 

17. Manifestly, then, a varied assortment of influences 
enter into the making of individual speech, and all these 
influences must be recognized by the writer when he under- 
takes to create appreciation of character and trait through 
dialogue. We say " when." For dialogue is not always 
to be worked to the hardest with a view to characterization. 
It must always be consistent with the character, but it 
may in certain circumstances be over-emphasized if its 
characterizing value alone be thought of. A less definitely 
individualized speech, for instance, will be assigned to 
minor persons in the story than is worked out for the 
leading person. Just as the subordinate persons are less 
minutely specialized in character (so that they shall not 
divide character interest with the central persons), so 
their manner of expression may be less minutely individ- 
ualized; they can without danger speak a more standard- 
ized language than can the leading person. So, too, when 
dialogue is not required to serve the particular purposes of 
local color, its dialectal and linguistic peculiarities, 
especially in the speech of minor persons, will be less 
emphasized. Even so, however, the dialogue must still be 
kept true to the character, the person, the situation, the 
environment, the mood, and the action; and to keep it 
true to person and character, the writer must definitely 
realize all the influences that have affected the character 
or worked upon the speech of the persons as that person 
has been conceived. 



Othee Peoblems of Fiction-Weiting 241 

XXVII. The Main Peactical Peoblems of Dialogue 
aee, to Make Suee of Essential Teuthfulness 
and Peoduce Veeisimilitude 

1. We have seen that dialogue must be true to the 
person, the situation, and the character. This means that 
it must faithfully represent the person, not merely as a 
member of a class group, but also as an individual ; must 
faithfully represent his character in (a) its outward traits 
and (b) its inner springs and motives ; and must faithfully 
represent also the mood in which it is spoken, and the mood 
and spirit of the situation and action of which it con- 
stitutes a part. That is, dialogue must be essentially true. 
All this has been dwelt upon in the preceding section. We 
need here, then, note only what the elements of dialogue 
are in which this essential truthfulness will be found. In 
this, the universal principles of expression guide us. 
Truthfulness lies in the substance and the manner of the 
dialogue. According as the thoughts, ideas, and feelings 
that it embodies are thoughts and feelings of the sort that 
would be thought or felt by the individual member of a 
certain class, possessing the character with which the 
author's conception has endowed him, and finding himself 
in the definite situation now created by the action — to the 
same degree the speech will be essentially true, provided 
that its manner be likewise such as accords with the per- 
son, with his character, and with the situation and mood. 
Assuming that the author has as definite a conception as 
he should have of his type, person, character, and situation, 
he needs then, to secure essential truthfulness, but to 
follow the good old rule for judging people in actual life ; 
put yourself in his place. What would be thought and 



242 Short Stories in the Making 

felt in such circumstances, what should be said, and what 
the particular person would say, will then become apparent. 

2. But — at least in its substance — dialogue may be 
essentially true, yet not appear to be so ; it may lack verisi- 
militude. And with the attempt to produce verisimilitude, 
most of the problems usually discussed in connection with 
the practical management of dialogue usually associate 
themselves. Assuming essential truthfulness in the sub- 
stance of the dialogue, let us now consider how essential 
true-seeming can be produced. We may begin by saying 
that verisimilitude in dialogue is the effect of plausibility 
created by the skillful management of conversational de- 
tails. The aim of this plausibility is, to make the reader 
feel that the person and his character are actual, and 
that the person is speaking as naturally he would speak in 
the same circumstances did they actually surround him. 

3. This aim recognized, dialogue finds itself shut off 
from all forms of expression that suggest self-conscious- 
ness, except in the instances in which the author purposely 
shows the speaker forth as self-conscious. On its prohibi- 
tive side, this fact will be seen to bar the employment of 
long, intricate, periodic, or otherwise bookish, oratorical, 
or affected sentences when they do not owe their quality 
to the intentional representation of corresponding charac- 
ter-traits in the speaker. Normal conversation is neither 
stilted nor pedantic, is not a constant struggle for " style " ; 
it is downright and direct, the colloquial expression of 
thought, simple in proportion to its matter, colored and 
either heightened or lowered by the circumstances of the 
moment. And normal conversation must be the standard 
for the choice of words and the form of sentences employed 
in reporting dialogue. All departures from this norm 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 243 

must be justified by the individuality of the character and 
person or by particular circumstances in the mood or 
situation. 

4. Yet dialogue cannot be merely the reporting ver- 
batim of speech such as the persons would employ were 
they conversing in actual life. Were it this, it would in 
print prove prolix, redundant, grammatically faulty, and 
tedious. Normal conversation cannot be carried over unr 
changed into print and continue to appear normal. Read- 
ing of biographies in which the conversations of great men, 
reputed to be interesting talkers, are reported with that 
inaccuracy that comes from too close adherence to actuali- 
ties, should be sufficient to convince one of this fact — and 
" realistic dialogue " in fiction should be more than 
enough. All artistic effect is the result of discriminative 
selection of impressive aspects for presentation; and in 
conversation reported for artistic purpose, this is as true 
as it is elsewhere. In making this selection, we choose 
the significant portions and manner of representative talk 
by the persons at particular moments when situation, 
mood, action, or character gives this talk especial value. 

5. We may assume here that the substance of the con- 
versation reported has interest — that it associates itself 
vitally with matters that, from the nature of the story, are 
significant. But it must do not this only; for verisimili- 
tude, it must also compress its substance into relatively 
limited compass. This compression is the result largely 
of the pruning away of verbal excrescences, of immaterial 
facts, of redundancies, and all the mass of conversational 
underbrush, watersprouts, and dead wood, usually found 
in actual talk. The main trunk and limbs of the thought, 
and no more, are ordinarily to be left. Only that remains 



244: Short Stories in the Making 

which is of importance in suggesting or outrightly saying 
what, by means of the conversation, we desire to convey. 
Compression, therefore, in our sense of the term, results 
from simplification and rejection; it is the process of con- 
centrating and intensifying speech until it becomes charged 
with significance and interpretive effect. 

6. We are, however, not yet done with the term " repre- 
sentative speech." Is idealized speech — the natural lan- 
guage thus pruned, shorn, and denatured — representative 
speech? Do we not falsify by thus improving? We do 
not. For verisimilitude in dialogue results only when 
some degree of improving manipulation is exercised upon 
speech in its natural form; the raw material must under- 
go treatment before the necessary results are produced. 
The language of the blasphemer cannot be as blasphemous 
in fiction as it often is — and with less effect — in actual 
life ; the language of the bookworm cannot be so pedantic, 
the dialect of the woodsman cannot be so illiterate. 20 
There is, when the best effects are attained, nearly always 
a toning down or a toning up from the actual into the 
idealized; and language thus idealized may, through its 
suggestive power — the very product of this modifying pro- 
cess — carry the desired impression home more truly than 
would verbatim repeating. 

7. There are, then, pitfalls in the way of the tyro 
when he undertakes to report dialogue for fictional effect. 
Some of these have already been hinted at; he may, for 
instance, fall into the error of choosing words that the 
person he has conceived would be unlikely ever to use, and 
of neglecting words that would be exceedingly natural to 

20 "Cannot be," yet they frequently are; for not a few writers 
depend upon exaggeration, not adjustment, in dialogue. 



Other Problems of Fiction- Writing 245 

the same person. Or he may throw the speech into a 
sentence-form that is unnatural or untrue, forgetting that 
normal speech — the standard he must keep in mind — is 
usually uttered in comparatively short sentences composed 
of comparatively simple and familiar words. On the other 
hand, he may forget that, though ordinary conversation 
shifts rapidly and irrelevantly from topic to topic, fiction 
dialogue must be so directed that its stages accomplish 
each a definite purpose — the expression of a mood, the 
advancement of an incident, the presentation of a theme, 
and so on. Actual conversation may and does meander, 
but dialogue in fiction must, even when it seems to linger 
and stray, drive forward to a point, and its substance and 
its manner must each be determined with this point in 
mind. 

8. Other pitfalls, too, there are. One of the widest, 
deepest, and least suspected of these is that of attempted 
brilliancy. The writer fancies that it is his opportunity 
and his duty to supply " scintillating coruscations " of 
fine phrasing and wonderful repartee for the delight of 
enraptured readers; whereas, it is his business to find 
out how groceryman John Jones and schoolteacher Sally 
Smith will speak in the circumstances in which he has 
imagined them, and to report their words with the least 
amount of " improvement " that is consistent with giving 
them the appearance of truth to life. In the conte espe- 
cially is there small opportunity for that egoistic, or ego- 
tistic, exploitation of the authors conversational brilliancy 
which to the apprentice seems so desirable. For the short 
story does not exist as a vehicle for the author's public 
parade of his own wit and philosophy; it exists solely 
to body forth a single conception of certain persons acting 



246 Short Stories iist the Making 

out a certain set of incidents until they reach a conclusive 
outcome. Act or speech that does not clearly aid in 
bodying forth this coherent and climactic passage from 
life, has no place in the conte. Whether it has a place in 
the novel is quite another matter; it may have, and it 
may not. 

9. Another pitfall, that of over-accuracy in the report- 
ing of speech, has already been explained. Truth to con- 
versational effect is not attained by stenographic transcripts 
of what the persons say ; it is attained rather by omitting 
the large amount of irrelevant, redundant, and verbose 
detail which they ordinarily speak, and heightening and 
simplifying the part of their speech that remains. Effec- 
tive dialogue, therefore, seems like actual conversation, 
hut is indeed merely its substance and manner idealized. 
Yet another pitfall, that of attempted self-revelation, gapes 
just along the pitfall of attempted brilliancy. Emphati- 
cally, the " message " that the young writer feels he has 
for the world does not call for preachment; not often is 
his philosophy of life important to the telling of his story 
except in so far as he owes to it his point of view. Rather, 
it will reach the world most impressively through the 
characters he conceives, the persons he presents, the scenes 
he chooses to set forth, and the atmosphere that he creates 
from all these materials. Any other " message " is second- 
ary in importance to that which his story, unclouded by 
accompanying philosophizing or sermonizing not vitally 
involved in its own narration, will carry to the reader. 
And moreover, though in long fiction there is sometimes a 
place for extraneous matter of this sort, in the conte there 
is no separate place for it. If it cannot be packed into the 
substance of the story, it cannot be taken along at all; 



Other Problems op Fiction-Writing 24Y 

it is excess baggage, and as such should be packed and 
transported separately. 21 

10. Particular hints on the management of speech 
in dialogue need not be further multiplied. The beginner, 
however, will be bothered by the problem of " he said " and 
like expressions. He should try to avoid the necessity of 
oft-repeated " saids " by casting the dialogue in such form 
that the identity of the speaker will be plain without 
specific indication. When verbs of utterance are neces- 
sary, they should be varied from speech to speech. This 
prevents monotonous repetition, and affords an opportunity 
to characterize the speech by indicating its quality; thus 
" drawled " will be full of characterization when " said " 
or " remarked " will be colorless. Long lists of synonyms 
for " said," " remarked," etc., will be found in books and 
periodicals upon writing and composition. The question 
which evidently has no purpose except to afford an opening 
for explanation or answering speech, is baldly inartistic; 
as, " What did you do then ? " Devices for indicating 
broken or hesitating speech, and the like, are almost entirely 
mechanical. If the dialogue calls for such speeches, means 
of indicating the desired effect will suggest themselves. 
They should always be simple — a dash, a line of leaders 
( ), and the like. 

11. The question, Dialect or no dialect, and if dialect, 
how much ? may be raised here. The dialect story is not 
in as great favor as it was at one time. It was a form 
of the local-color story, and this too has fallen off in 
popularity, although it has by no means disappeared, nor 

21 But distributed comment may be effectively used, introduced in 
association with dialogue by means of commenting words placed before 
or after the speech. 



248 Short Stories in the Making 

will. A story strong in dialect may prove a pleasant varia- 
tion, affording new opportunity to show the underlying 
nature of man working out the course of human life in 
new surroundings — for when dialect is important in a 
story, the persons, setting, and environment are usually 
also somewhat different from the formal standard. A 
story calling for much New England dialect, for example, 
is likely to he a story cast and staged to show New England 
village life, New England seacoast life, New England 
lumbering life, or the like — the life of some more or less 
separate and distinct, if not isolated, social group in its 
characteristic environment. There is, of course, no reason 
why the speaker of any dialect cannot he brought into the 
most familiar and usual surroundings, and there portrayed, 
provided that his introduction into and continuance in this 
alien environment be made plausible. 

12. In managing dialect, one great danger is, that the 
dialect will be overdone. Both speech and spelling can be 
made extreme. Merely a salting of dialect terms, and a 
restrained employment of dialect spellings, will he more 
successful than the building up of freakish speech such as 
never was on sea or land. In indicating speech intended to 
have a foreign tang — the language of foreigners attempting 
English, or the English rendering of a foreign tongue — the 
introduction of foreign words in large numbers should be 
avoided; instead, employ a fairly literal translation of 
the foreign idiom over into English. And no historical, 
foreign, or other dialect verisimilitude ever resulted from 
the mechanical employment of titles, names, and phrases 
that are merely formal and conventional devices — the gad- 
zooks, 'sbloods, and car-r-rambas of brummagem imitation. 

13. The foundation of successful dialogue-reporting is 



Other Problems of Fiction- Writing 249 

now plain — the same foundation as that of successful por- 
trayal of character and individual action. The writer 
must know his people, his society, and their environment. 
He must know not merely what people in general talk 
about, and what they say ; he must know, also, what persons 
of the particular class with which he is dealing talk 
about, and what they say, and how they say it. Thus we 
come back yet again to the counsel that cannot too often 
be emphasized for those who wish to write fiction: get 
out among people; learn men, their ways, their thought, 
and their speech. No writer who was even moderately 
skillful in the use of his pen, ever had insurmountable 
difficulty in presenting either dialogue or deed, incident 
or motive, who knew his people, their ways, and their 
world. 



THE QUESTION ANSWERED 

A number of the questions often asked by beginners in 
short-story writing are here set down and answered briefly 
by themselves, although most of them are answered, at 
least by implication, in the preceding pages. 

What is climax? Climax is the rise of the plot and 
interest to its heights of suspense and emotion. Really the 
term covers all the period in which this rising effect is 
evident ; but it is often used to indicate merely the height 
of the climax. 

What is suspense, and how is it produced? Suspense 
is a stirring of present interest coupled with a strong 
sense that we are approaching some climactic situation 



250 Short Stories in the Making 

or incident, the nature of which we strongly wish to learn. 
This interest is produced by selecting significant material 
and combining it gradually in such a way that the reader 
perceives a steady increase in its total importance, and 
thus is led to follow the action through until the outcome 
is revealed. Suspense is greatest at the climactic height, 
but its accompanying interest does not cease until the 
outcome is made clear. But in order that the interest shall 
continue, the outcome should not be too long postponed 
after the climactic height is passed. 

Shall I try to forecast the outcome to the reader? Not 
if you must betray the outcome to do so. But if the fore- 
casting so hints the outcome as to stimulate interest, raising 
a doubt or an expectation even while seeming almost to 
settle it, the effect is good. This is one means of creating 
suspense; the facts, incidents, or hints make us expect an 
outcome of significance. (But in a story that shows the 
steady advance of fate, the effect is produced largely by 
the sense that the struggle is futile; therefore, the fore- 
casting may be plainer.) 

Is it advisable to introduce opposed atmosphere or tone 
elements? They may be introduced for the sake of con- 
trast, and in longer stories different movements may have 
each a different atmosphere or tone. But the final effect 
must be one of unity, not of incongruity. 

How can I be " original " ? By having energy and 
thoughtfulness enough to create a viewpoint of your own 
in you, and then by daring to see the world from your 
point of view. Originality implies independence, observa- 
tion, knowledge, and power of expression. Perhaps it is 
largely a matter of temperament, and therefore a gift of the 
gods ; yet it can be encouraged by means of resolute and 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 251 

discriminating independence of view, and it can be 
destroyed by submitting to influences tbat produce blind 
acceptance of stock ideas. Systems of education that 
constrain all pupils to the same kind, quality, and extent 
of achievement, have been charged with destroying 
originality. The accusation may not be without founda- 
tion. 

What must I do to attain " compression " f Employ the 
fewest possible means for establishing the fact and creating 
the effect that you are concerned with (economy of detail) ; 
suppress inessentials ; reject materials that but moderately 
serve your purpose, and choose those that are pre-eminently 
effective. But do not think that compression means the 
complete stripping of the narrative to the bone ; write all 
you need to write — managing your presentation skillfully 
— to accomplish your purpose. 

You strike out so much of my detail; isn't it necessary 
to motivate and explain the various things that happen? 
It is necessary to motivate everything, but not to explain 
the motivation. For illustration: A person in your story 
is on one side of the street ; it becomes necessary to have 
him on the other side. You need not explain how he comes 
to cross; it is immaterial whether he crossed to look into 
a show window or to flirt with a young woman. All that is 
necessary is, that it seem reasonable to have him on the 
other side. People cross the street for every sort of reason 
and no reason: why explain? In a word, then, explain 
only when explanation is unescapable ; otherwise, make 
certain that the thing is reasonable and plausible, and let 
it explain itself. In the main, well-managed motivation 
requires no explanation; it requires only presentation. 

Must the motivation make the outcome of my plot 



252 Short Stories in the Making 

inevitable? No; otherwise, where would there be any 
conflict ? Ordinarily, there are two equally possible out- 
comes up to the decisive moment; only then does one out- 
come become inevitable and the other impossible. 

Does the problem story have an outcome? Not always; 
see The Lady or the Tiger? If it have any outcome, this 
outcome will be of such character that it merely emphasizes 
the problem raised by the preceding facts. 

Can I tell a story within a story ? You can, but you had 
better not. Even in novels the story within a story is 
often pretty awkward ; in the conte there is little place and 
less reason for it. Probably ninety-nine of every hundred 
story-within-a-story narratives could be remodeled to avoid 
this awkward method. 

How can I get thoroughly familiar with the persons in 
my story ? Before beginning the story, write the biography 
of each person; show him up to yourself in this history, 
so that you have a record of his past, his characteristics, 
and know him better than he knows himself. Then you 
won't have to stop so often to ponder whether his action is 
according to his character or not — quite likely deciding 
upon inconsistencies through this fragmentary method of 
creating your persons. 

7s the document form of narration good for the short 
story ? Any form is good that works, but the management 
of letters, notes, telegrams, diaries, and the like, calls for 
well-developed selective judgment, extreme skill in con- 
densation of language, much skill in suggesting incidents 
from the documents, and a light, sketchy manner of com- 
position. 

How long ought the beginning to be? Make it as short 
as you can without losing its effect. Keep it in proportion 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 253 

with the narrative proper. Of course, when the action 
begins with the beginning, we can scarcely say that the 
story has a separate division called the opening. 

Ought I to revise much? Of course you ought, and to 
rewrite too. ISTot infrequently a complete recasting of plot 
and narrative is necessary. 

Are 'poetic words out of place? Not if they fit them- 
selves to a poetic thought and this thought fits the tone, 
purpose, and subject of the story. Otherwise, they are out 
of place. 

How can I acquire style? Don't try to — directly. 
Strive rather to report accurately what you observe and 
think and feel. Study words and language only with a 
view to becoming more able thus to set down truly and 
adequately what you have in mind. If you can do this, 
you will have style in abundance — provided what you have 
in mind is of value. In other words, don't struggle for 
" style " ; struggle for thought, imagination, sympathy, 
understanding, and the power to utter what is in you. In 
any other sense, " style " is a snare and a betrayer. 

Why do so many writers speak of the labor of author- 
ship ? Because authorship, seriously pursued, is laborious. 
Don't get the idea that, when you take up the writing pro- 
fession, you are going for a picnic lunch in the cool of 
the evening. If you want an easy job, take up farming 
instead. 

What short-story writer should I take as a model? 
All — and then none. Every writer who has done welL 
enough to get a story into a reputable periodical is likely to 
show you something from which you can profit. But don't 
copy models ; learn principles and apply them. It is you 
that will make your story worth reading if anybody does so. 



254 Shoet Stories in the Making 

But wont imitating help me ? It may, at least in your 
earlier apprenticeship. Some persons can benefit materi- 
ally from imitating, merely for practice purposes. But 
this is a sort of inductive study, exactly as is the copying 
of a great master by a student of painting; he copies in 
order to discover (a) just what the effect is that the master 
worked, and (b) just how he managed things — his prin- 
ciples and devices — to work that effect. 

Who is the best short-story writer? The man who ob- 
serves most, understands best, sympathizes deepest, most 
masterfully creates new persons and situations out of what 
he knows, and most clearly embodies in language the fruits 
of an abounding imagination. 

Why do you strike out my descriptive beginnings? Fre- 
quently because they are not openings. A true opening 
does more than merely stand before the story ; it " be- 
longs " ; it does something that the telling of the story 
calls for, and calls for at that place. Besides, your descrip- 
tion keeps getting in the way of the action. Why describe 
when dramatic action is waiting impatiently for a chance 
to begin? And — you make them too flowery; your story 
often raises the suspicion that you wrote it just for a 
chance to work in the description. 

How shall one block out the plot? After getting the 
working-plot and synopsis clearly in mind, make an action- 
plot or a scenario. Study the method of writing scenarios 
or action-plots for photoplays, and frankly follow that. 

Where can I study motivation? In the great novels, 
short stories, and plays, and on the stage. The better 
class of photo-dramas sometimes afford excellent studies 
in motivation — but keep away from most of the European 
films, the melodrama, and the slapstick comedy. Photo- 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 255 

dramas written expressly for the screen show motivation 
better than do adaptations of plays, novels, etc. 

Tell me how to learn to write dialogue. Listen to others, 
watch their tones, pronunciations, mannerisms, peculiari- 
ties of inflection, and vocabulary, etc., etc. Then practice ; 
write out talks that sound true. Keep it up. You can get 
some practice, too, by writing out dialogue to accompany 
scenes from photoplays. Imitate; talk in the character 
of the person whose conversation you are trying to repro- 
duce. Remember, successful fiction writing requires you 
to put yourself in the place of the person — and do in 
imagination what he would do. 

How can I put my personal beliefs into a story ? Don't ; 
write a sermon — maybe someone would care for them there. 

/ see plenty of stories but can't discover a theme for 
them. You write the story ; let the reader find the theme. 
'Twill be there if you really have a story. 

I can think of plenty of themes, but I can't find stories. 
Quit; or if you go on, drop the themes and think of 
nothing but plots, people, and stories. 

Ought one to write about horrible subjects? Sometimes ; 
sometimes not. As long as the painful, the repulsive, and 
the horrible, are part of life, art will be under the impulse 
and the obligation to interpret them. But too much 
horror destroys the pleasurable esthetic emotion that art 
is supposed to aim at. Commercially, the answer depends 
on your reading public. There is a steady market, of a 
certain sort, for " thrillers " ; but if one does not wish to 
specialize in this border-line sort of stuff, he had better 
keep the horrible in a subordinate relationship to his 
other materials. Unpleasant stories are not desired by 
the magazines that " cater " to the " average " reader, and 



256 Short Stories in the Making 

even the best magazines will seldom handle stories, even of 
power and literary excellence, that stir the emotions too 
strongly with intense motifs productive of a depressing or 
unpleasant reaction. Naturally, the artist, when he has 
such a story to write, will write it, and the God of Things 
as They Are will recognize the labor even though the gods 
of things-as-we-doctor-them-up can't really follow Him that 
far, don't you know. 

Why are a good many of the most noted short stories 
based on intense motifs? Because the short story (conte), 
like the lyric, is especially adapted to presenting situations 
strong in feeling. We hear that " the short story gives us 
only a crisis," — an assertion that is not strictly accurate, 
but that emphasizes an important tendency of the short 
story. And as we all know, emotion concentrates and 
breaks at the height of the crisis. Like this climactic 
height, the intensity of this emotion is transitory. We do 
not remain in a transport of feeling long at a time. Hence 
the short story, developing some brief situation, is pecu- 
liarly suitable for presenting those situations in which 
horror, grief, and other intense emotions, are uppermost. 

The short story is so inadequate; one cant present the 
universal in it. Can't one ? Can he present it even in a 
novel? If you mean that one can present only a bit of 
a fraction of the universal, we won't dispute. Presenting 
the universal merely means, when interpreted, selecting 
incidents and persons and situations that are representative 
of life, and handling them in such a way that they suggest 
a broad range of other situations in which similar condi- 
tions exist. Does not Ameera, in Without Benefit of 
Clergy, clearly and inescapably suggest the universal fact 
of woman's love and mother-devotion ? After all, " pre- 



Other Problems of Fiction-Writing 257 

senting the universal " is just one of our cant phrases ; 
nobody knows the universal truth; the best we can do is 
to seize upon some aspect of it, and set it forth so that 
others shall see it too. And any artist — short-story writer 
or other — can do that. 

What is social characterization? It is the making clear 
of social conditions such as enter into the story. Anything 
that shows general facts about the society and life sur- 
rounding the persons and incident of a story, accomplishes 
social characterization. Study Merimee's Corsican stories 
Mateo Falcone and Colomba, and Maupassant's A Piece 
of String, for passages in which the society appertaining 
to the central persons and incident is characterized. Many 
of Barrie's stories can be called social characterizations, 
because they interpret Scotch conditions so clearly; a 
similar thing could be said of Mrs. Freeman's Eew Eng- 
land stories. Stevenson's A Lodging for the Night is strong 
in social atmosphere, or characterization. Social charac- 
terization may sometimes give background (The Piece of 
String, Without Benefit of Clergy), and sometimes explain 
motive and act (Falcone; Morrison's On the Stairs). 

Is it good practice to divide the story by means of 
asterisks or chapter numbers? Some books say it is not. 
Good writers do it. As the narrative drama often consists 
of separate movements, scenes, or situations, it seems non- 
sensical not to mark these off when they become long or are 
distinctly separated in the structural plan. 

Can the short story interpret national character? What 
else do Barrie's Thrums stories do? Is not this what is 
done in part in Kipling's An Habitation Enforced ? 

What are character hints? Acts, words, etc., that give 



258 Short Stories in the Making 

us a suggestion of the character from which they spring. 
What sort of man has his room decorated with pictures of 
bathing-girls? What sort uses perfume? or walks two 
miles to the post office to trade a spoiled postcard for a 
good one ? or buys twenty-five-cent cigarettes and takes his 
wife candy at twenty cents the pound? Similarly, there 
are picture hints, mood hints, and incident hints. 
Picture hint : A rugged, long-faced, slender old man, with 
his mouth even wider open than his eyes. — Mood hint: 
Penny Kod grabbed for his hat, and not getting it, danced 
a howling anger-dance at the feet of the bean-pole sixth- 
former. — Incident hint: Grimes went about methodically 
bandaging his hand in arnica-soaked strips of old flour- 
sacks. "Hit something?" asked Davis. Grimes's jaw 
set. " Hard," he answered laconically. After a pause, 
he added : " They had the doctor." 

Why do my descriptions seem so vague? Because they 
are vague. You don't visualize, or you at least visualize 
but dimly. You explain a scene or an act, instead of 
seeing it in your mind's eye " just as real as real " and 
then writing down what you see. Train your imagination 
to picture things to you so that you clearly see them. 
Clear visualization is one chief explanation of Shak- 
spere's greatness. 

My first scene will be good, and then I run down. 
What's the cause of that ? Lack of staying power and im- 
patience to get the story in writing. You get a workable 
idea and think out a scene to begin with; then you are 
in such a hurry to see how the story will sound that you 
slap down the rest of your narrative without waiting to 
work it out incident by incident and detail by detail. You 



Other Problems of Fiction- Writing 259 

want your cake before it is done, or you haven't the en- 
durance to stay with the job long enough to do it properly. 

What are the important elements of a setting? Show 
me the setting and I will try to tell you. There are as 
many kinds of setting as there are kinds of bores. A 
setting may be material or psychological, moral or im- 
moral, picturesque or commonplace, colorless or full of 
color, silent or noisy, quiet or full of action, clean or 
dirty, depressing or animating, and so on, and on again. 
The important elements of any setting are those things that 
make it especially useful for your action, theme impres- 
sion, etc. Find out what that needs, and then study the 
setting for the right qualities to meet the requirements. 

What books do you recommend? The book of life. 
After that, any that will broaden your mind, better your 
taste, develop your sympathies, inspire you with the spirit 
of words. 

/ want to write romance, but all my material seems so 
commonplace. You are blind on the romance side, and are 
holding your hand over the realistic eye. Give yourself 
a good long opportunity to discover romance in the common 
things of life, and if you fail, take up the writing of an 
Advice to Girls column in a newspaper. Honestly, can't 
you see the romance in that love affair between Billy, 
the hardworking clerk in the drugstore, and Grace, in at 
Miss Beeson's shop ? Nor in young lawyer Kane's fight to 
keep Younger the hardware man from getting control of 
the coal supply of your village ? Look again. 

In getting material to adapt in new stories, how far 
back ought one to begin in the magazines? About six 
thousand years. If he wants really to be honest as well as 



260 Shoet Stoeies in the Making 

safe, he ought not to " adapt " anything published later 
than the year one before the creation. One may find hints 
and suggestions of new plots, new themes, new stories, 
anywhere; but there is an uglier word that means the 
same as " adapting." 

How can I criticise my own work? That is difficult to 
do, but if you are serious you will find a way. But self- 
criticism presupposes dramatic and literary insight — the 
gift of perceiving when a piece of writing is well achieved 
or the opposite ; if you lack this qualification, even earnest- 
ness will not help you. You must also cultivate an im- 
personal attitude toward your completed work; so that 
you shall be able to regard it as unconcernedly as if it 
were your neighbor's. Few persons can criticise their 
writings to advantage while the composition is still recent ; 
hence the excellent advice so often given, that stories be 
laid aside and allowed to " cool " before criticism is at- 
tempted. 

My friends say . Pray to be delivered from your 

friends. Supposing them to be otherwise qualified, they 
are prejudiced by their friendship for you. Some won't 
wish to offend you ; others will think what you write good 
because you wrote it ; others will be flattered by the chance 
to commend or disapprove a " real author." 

How long shall I wait before inquiring about a manu- 
script submitted to an editor? Be careful not to submit 
to doubtful periodicals ; then give the editor all the time 
he seems to want up to six months. The longer he keeps 
your story, the better the chance that he is pleased with it. 
If you wish to make certain that the MS. is delivered, en- 
close a postcard with it in this form : 



Othee Peoblems of Fiction-Weiting 261 

19 

Keceipt acknowledged of MS , 

submitted to this magazine at owner's risk. 



By 



Such a card is not necessary, but most offices will fill it out 
without grumbling. Above all, when you do make inquiry, 
don't do so in a complaining, grouch-begotten manner. Be 
courteous and business-like. 

Are market-notes in the writers' magazines accurate? 
Many of them are as accurate as circumstances permit. 
But often they are no more so than is a news item in a trade 
journal, telling of the existence of a market, but indicating 
absolutely nothing of the responsibility of the firm. Don't 
send MSS. hit or miss on the basis of such information. 
Some publishing firms so reported are little better than 
fly-by-nights. 

Can I copyright my story in advance of publication? 
No. Our copyright law leaves the writer without any 
protection from dishonest publishers, who can print his 
work, copyright it themselves, and refuse to make settle- 
ment in any way. Such publishers are usually law-proof. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Accident in motivation, 86 ff. 
Acknowledgments, ix. 
Action (also see Acts, Inci- 
dent ) . 

Conte requires persons in, 15- 
18. 

In creation of effect, 25-26; 36- 
43; 140 ff. 

Defined, 37. 

In plot story, 36-43. 

As plot element, 72. 

Movements in, 99 ff. 

In opening, 140 ff . 

Affecting sequence, 161. 
Action-plot, 76 ff. 
Activity, 37; 136; 140-141. 
Acts (i.e., deeds and conduct of 
persons in action). 

Single acts not conclusive, 
207 ff. 
Actual, The (see Facts). 
" Adapting " previous work, 259. 
Adventure story, 42. 
Allegory, 10. 
Anecdote, 9. 
An ti- theme (see Foil). 
Art. 

Fundamentally moral, 178 ff. 

Not communicable, xi. 
Artist (see Author). 
Atmosphere. 

Emphasized for effect, 25-26; 
54-70. 

Atmosphere story, 54-70. 

Denned, 55 ff. 

How made to appeal, 58; 63- 
68. 

Setting and environment in, 
59 ff.; 257. 

In the opening, 127 ff. 

Affecting sequence, 165 ff. 

Through dialogue, 231 ff. 

Inconsistent elements, 250. 



Author. 

His artistic impulse, 1-2. 
Best preparation of, 7-8 ; 52 ff. ; 

63-64; 68-70. 
Must know his materials, 

189 ff. 
Ferment vs. sound conclusions, 

189 ff. 
Artist's eagerness, 190. 
A reporter of life, Iff.; 190 ff. 
Author's " view of life," 

194 ff.; 212 ff.; 241 ff.; 

255. 
Author and public taste (see 

Reading Public). 
Author's attitude toward his 

persons, 212 ff. 
Authorship is labor, 253; 258. 

Books for story-writer's reading, 
259. 

Censorship (see Moral Quality 

and Purpose Story). 
Character (see also Character- 
ization ) . 

As a plot element, 13-15; 15- 
17; 25-26. 

Character story, 43-54. 

Denned, 47-50; 69-70; 206- 
207. 

Influences that affect it, 47- 
50. 

How manifested, 50; 207 ff.; 
222 ff. 

How presented, 50; 214 ff. 

Self-consistency of, 52. 

In the opening, 148. 

As unifying means, 181 ff. 

Author's attitude, 212 ff. 

How conceived, 214 ff. 

Types, (208-218) ; 218-219. 

Physical description, 222 ff. 



265 



266 



Index 



Chabacterization (see also 
Character ) . 
What it must note, 50. 
Its means, 51. 
Affecting sequence, 162 ff. 
Initial characterization, 163 ff. 
Character and person, 182 ff. 
Problems of, 206 ff. 
Emphasizes individual traits, 

208-212. 
Class traits in, 208 if. 
Interpreted by author, 212 ff. 
Traits portrayed how, 214 ff. 
Character creation, 208-220. 
Intimate knowledge required, 

219 ff. 
Stock persons, 208-212; 221- 

222. 
By physical description, 222 ff. 
By analysis, 225 ff. 
By act, deed, etc., 227 ff., and 

passim. 
Through dialogue, 234 ff. 
Character hints, 257. 
Character sketch (see Sketch). 
Class traits, 208 ff. 
Climactic moment (see under 

Plot). 
Complication (see under Plot). 
Compression (see Economy). 
Concentrative material, 107 ff.; 

232 ff. 
Conclusion not inevitable, 16. 
Concrete, the, in art (litera- 
ture), 3ff. 
Conduct (see Acts). 
Conflict (see under Plot). 
Congruity, 87 ff.; 90 ff.; 250; 

253; 255. 
Consequential exposition, 171 ff.; 

231. 
Consistency. (See Plausibility, 

under Plot.) 
Constructive imagination, 6. 
Conte. 

Employment of this term, x. 
Defined, 8-23. 

Is a drama in narrative, 10 ff. 
Classified, 25-26. 
Tested by what, 192 ff. 
Adapted to " studies from 
life"?, 215-217. 



Conte (Continued). 

Adapted to intense situations, 
256. 
Copyright law defective, 261. 
Creative imagination, 6-7. 
Crisis (see Plot, Climax in). 

Defined, 15-18. 

Uses, 24. 
Criticism, self and friends, 260. 

Decisive moment (see Plot). 
Denouement. (See Outcome, 

under Plot.) 
Description in setting, 141-145; 
165-166; 254; in character- 
ization, 164; 222. 
Detail, redundant, 251. 
Dialect (see Dialogue). 
Dialogue. 

In opening, 139 ff. 

Varied usefulness, 139 ff.; 

229 ff.; 241 ff. 
Exposition by means of, 230 ff. 
Atmosphere secured by, 231 ff. 
As intensifying means, 232 ff. 
As characterizing means, 234 ff. 
Management of, 235 ff.; 241 ff.; 

254. 
Indicative of inward character, 

236 ff. 
Adapted to person, place, etc., 

237; 242 ff. 
Language determined by what 

influences, 237 ff. 
Requirements of, 241 ff. 
Verisimilitude secured how, 

241 ff. 

Adapted from normal talk, 

242 ff. 
Misuses of, 243 ff. 
Dialect, 247 ff. 

Didactic stories, 26-27. 

"Discovery," 89. 

Distribution of detail (see under 

Plot). 
Divisions, or chapters, in short 

story, 257. 
Documentary form, 252. 
Dramatic defined, 13-15. 
Dramatic values, 191 ff. 

Economy of means (or detail), 
17; 23; 66ff.; 80; 116; 



Index 



mi 



153; 167; 182; 188; 208- 
212; 243-244; 251. 

Emotional appeal (see Atmos- 
phere, esp. 58, 63 ff.). 

Emphasis of material (see Econ- 
omy of Means and Concen- 
trative Matter). 

Ending (see also Outcome, un- 
der Plot, and Falling Ac- 
tion), 169 ff. 

Entertainment an end of fiction, 
Iff. 

Environment. 

In atmosphere, 56; 58 ff. 
Concerned in sequence, 165 ff. 

Episode, 9. 

Ethics (see Moral Quality and 
Didactic Story). 

Experience, 5 ff. 

Exposition (see under Plot). 

Fable, 10. 

Fact and reality, 4; in fiction, 

5. 
Facts, dramatic values (see 

Dramatic Values). 
Falling action (see Plot). 
Fiction. 
Aims of, 1-8. 
Light forms of are legitimate, 

7. 
Foil, 69. 

Generating circumstance ( see 

under Plot). 
Grand Climax (see Plot, Climax 

in, and Climactic Moment 

in). 

Horrible, The, 255. 

Human nature (see Character, 

Characterization ) . 
Humor in the conte, 65. 

Imagination and its forms, 4-8. 

— imagined fact, 4ff. 
Imitating models, 253-254. 
Imitation (i.e., copying) im- 
possible in art, 214 ff. 
Impres sion ( Single ) . 

Essential to effect, 17. 

Defined, 19-23; 32; 36. 

Test of, 21. 



Impression {Continued). 
Kinds of, 24-26. 
How achieved, 181 ff. 
Impulse in acts, 207-208. 
Incident (also see Action). 
In plot construction, 13-15; 
36 ff.; 41; 95 ff.; 100 ff.; 
passim under Plot. 
In creation of effect, 25-26. 
Plot and intensifying, 107 ff. 
Grouping of ( see Sequence ) . 
Incident (as a form of narra- 
tion), 9. 
Inciting moment (see under 

Plot). 
Ingenious complication plots, 

38 ff. 
Initial response, 155. 
Integration (see also Concentra- 

tive Material), 166 ff. 
Intensifying incident (see Con- 

centrative) . 
Interest, 92; 100 ff.; 126; 129- 

136; 140-141; 249. 
Interpretation in fiction, 1-8. 

— how best effected, 2ff. 

— by theme, 34 ff. 

— by contes, 256-257. 

Keynote struck (see Opening). 
Knowledge of materials re- 
quired, 189-206; 219 ff. 

Language to fit thought (see 

also Congruity) , 66. 
Length in " short " story, 22 ff. 

Man and his relationships, 44 ff. 
Market notes in literary jour- 
nals, 261. 
Massed detail (see under Plot). 
Memory, imaginative, 6. 
Model writings, 253-254. 
Mood (see Atmosphere). 
Moral quality in art, 178 ff. 
Motif, 96. 
Motivation, Motive. 

Incidental reference to, 10-12; 
13-15; 251; 254. 

Defined, 15. 

As requisite of plot, 72; 96 ff. 
Movement (advancing stages), 
99 ff. 



268 



Index 



Moving pictures as study aids, 

160. 
Mystery story, 40-41; 123. 

Narrator's "angle" (who shall 
tell the story?), 138; 143- 
144. 

Novelet, 9. 

Opening. 

Functions of, 122-125; 137. 

Contents of, 122-126; 130 ff. 

Interest in, 126 ff. ; 137; 140 ff.; 
148. 

Requisites of, 132; 135. 

Management of, 137 ff.; 252. 

Dialogue in, 139 ff. 

Action in, 140 ff. 

Setting in, 141 ff. 

Massed material in, 141 ff. 

Character in, 148. 

Action and the opening, 149 ff. 
Order of events (see under 

Plot; also see Sequence). 
Originality, 250. 
Outcome (see under Plot). 

Persons (also see Character). 
Must be shown in action, 15- 

18. 
Initial characterization, 163 ff. 
Description of, 163 ff. 
Person and characterization, 

181 ff. 
Subordinate, 182 ff. 
Choice of, 218. 

Stock types, 208-212; 221-222. 
Author's history of, 252. 
Philosophical prologue, 33-34. 

— epilogue, 173. 
Philosophy of life, 65; 194 ff.; 

212 ff.; 246 ff. 
Plausibility (see under Plot). 
Plot. 

Treatment in this book, ix. 
Loose, close-wrought, dra- 
matic, 10 ff.; 95; 97 ff. 
Dramatic, 10-15; 50; 71-72. 
Essential form in conte, 16-18. 
Climax in, 10-12; 18; 74; 
97 ff.; 168 ff.; 249. (See 
also Sequence.) 
Test of unified, 21-22. 



Plot ( Continued ) . 

In creation of effect, 24-26. 

Conflict; complication, 30; 
72; 85 ff. 

Outcome in, 31; 36; 72; 75; 
115-121; 192; 250; 251; 252. 

Story of plot, 36-43. 

Congested, 41; 104; 252. 

Detailed treatment, 71-121. 

Stage-plot applies, 71. 

Essentials of, 71. 

Motivation (see Motivation) . 

Order of events in, 73; 80; 
122-124; 151 ff.; 226. 

Beginning, middle, end, 73. 

Exposition, 74-85. 

Exciting moment, 74 ; 85 ff . 

Inciting impulse, 74; 85 ff. 

Decisive moment, 74; 93 ff.; 
115-121. 

Climactic moment, 74. 

Rising action, 74; 92. 

Falling action, 75; 115-121. 

Anticipatory delay, 75; 155. 

Stages of plot fullness, 76 ff. 

Distributed detail, 80 ff. 

Massed detail, 80 ff.; 141 ff.; 
166 ff. 

Generating circumstance, 80 ff . 

Accident in, 87 ff. 

Plausibility (consistency, con- 
gruity), 90 ff. 

Development of plot, how man- 
aged, 95 ff.; 254. 

Interlocking incident, 97 ff. 

Movements (stages of ad- 
vance), 99 ff.; 104 ff. 

Incident in plot (see also 
under Incident). 

Interest value of incidents, 
100 ff. 

Subplot, 104; 252. 

As carrier of non-plot ma- 
terial, 107 ff. 

Telescoped ending, 117 ff. 

Distinct ending, 169 ff. 
Plot-germ, abstract, embryo, etc., 

76 ff. 
Plot-incident, 107 ff. 
Problem story, 30 ff.; 252. 
Problems of composition, scheme 
of, 176-177. 



Index 



269 



Psychological — 

Conte, 50 ff. 

Narration, 50 ff.; 228. 
Public (see Reading Public) . 
" Punch " ( see Interest ) . 
Pure- theme (see Theme). 
Purpose story, 27 ff. 

Reading public, 23; 28-29; 45; 

192 ff.; 200 ff. 
Reflective foresight, 47-48. 
Resistant delay, 75, 155. 
Revision, 253. 
Rising action (see Plot). 
Romance in common things, 259. 

Scenario, 9; 76 ff. 

Selection of materials (see also 

PZo*), 65 ff. 
Self-consciousness, 242. 
Sensational methods, 129 ff. 
Setting (see also Atmosphere). 

In atmosphere, 59 ff. 

In opening, 141-145. 

In dialogue, 144-145. 

In regard to sequence, 165 ff. 

Massed, distributed, 166 ff. 

Kinds and elements, 259. 
Sequence. ( See also Order, under 
Plot.) 

The opening (see Opening). 

Breaks between movements, 
151. 

Contributory matter, 152 ff. 

Main facts, 153 ff. 

Chronological order, 123 ff.; 
154 ff. 

Non-chronological order- 
schemes, 156. 

Distributed detail, 157. 

Determined by author's con- 
ception, 159. 

Cued scenes, 160. 

Action involved, 161. 

Characterization involved, 
162 ff. 

Environmental matter, 165 ff. 

Climactic height, 168 ff.; 
171 ff. 

In characterization, 226. 



Short Stories, To-Day's, Ana- 
lyzed, viii. 

Short Story (see Conte). 

Significance of incident, etc. (see 
Dramatic Values). 

Situation, 38. 

Sketch, 9. 

Social characterization, 257. 

Sophistication in author or char- 
acter, 69-70. 

Speech (see Dialogue). 

Stock persons, 208-212. 

Style, 253. 

Subjective coloring (see Atmos- 
phere). 

Submitting MSS., 260-261. 

Surprise story, 39-40; 117. 

Suspense (see Interest). 

Synopsis, 76 ff. 

Tale, 9. 

Taste, public (see Reading 

Public). 
Telescoped ending, 117 ff. 
Temperament in character, 48- 

50. 
Theme. 

In creation of effect, 25-26. 
Theme story, 26-36. 
Defined (26-31), 31-35. 
Moral quality in, 178 ff. 
Time order (see Sequence). 
Time unity (see Unity). 
To-Day's Short Stories Analyzed, 

viii. 
Truths of life in fiction form 
(see also Theme), 3 ff . 

Unities, 18; 178 ff. 
Universe and man, 44 ff. 

Vagueness, cause of, 258. 
Variety in character, 208 ff. 
Verisimilitude (see also Con- 

gruity and Plausibility ) , 92 ; 

241 ff. 
View of life (see Philosophy of 

Life). 

Wit (see Humor). 
Working-plot, 76 ff. 



FOEENOTE 

To instructors and students: Stimulus and helpful sug- 
gestion result from open discussion and free exchange of 
ideas. So far as possible, therefore, all exercises should 
be presented before the class or section — of course not 
omitting individual conference and criticism when ad- 
visable. Sometimes it proves feasible to place the stu- 
dents' exercises in the library or the seminar-room for read- 
ing and study by all the class. When this is done, the 
critical and suggestive reports from the members of the 
class will usually prove more carefully considered and 
more specific than are the opinions formed merely from 
hearing the narratives read aloud. 

Every instructor must of course determine for himself 
whether he will lay out the time of the course on the 
basis of a large proportion of written work, with the text- 
book study collateral, or on the basis of textbook study, 
with writing and the other exercises merely supplementary 
thereto. 



__ 



CHAPTER I 
Theory of the Short-Story Type 

Section I 

1. Reading-survey ; the purpose of fiction. — Make a 
rapid survey of short fiction in the current magazines, 
observing the emphasis of the stories upon life or upon 
entertainment. (Outside study-time for two or three reci- 
tations can well be devoted to this survey, followed by 
one period of class-room report and discussion. Large 
classes can be sectioned and the reading apportioned 
among the sections ; and if the time be limited, the read- 
ing can be further apportioned to individuals. It will 
be better, however, for all students to read the same maga- 
zines, including those of the interpretive and those of the 
diversional tendency.) 

In the following list, the more accessible and represen- 
tative magazines are grouped, roughly, according to a gen- 
eral resemblance, or tendency, to be found in the stories 
they seem to prefer. 

Group 1 The Little Review. 

The Atlantic Monthly. 



The Century. 
Harper's Magazine. 
Scribner's Magazine. 
The Touchstone. 



Practicing the Shoet Stoey 

Group 2 American Magazine. 
McClure's Magazine. 
Everybody's Magazine. 

Group 3 Adventure. 
Argosy. 

All-Story Weekly. 
People's Favorite Magazine. 
Popular Magazine. 
Top-Notch Magazine. 
Detective-Story Magazine. 
Black Cat. 

Group 4 Saturday Evening Post. 
Collier's Weekly. 
(Leslie's Weekly.) 



(Metropolitan Magazine.) 



Red Book Magazine. 

Group 5 Ainslee's Magazine. 
Smith's Magazine. 
Munsey's Magazine. 



Blue Book Magazine. 
Green Book Magazine. 



Group 6 Smart Set. 

Cosmopolitan. 
Hearst's. 
Live Stories. 



^_^— 



Exercises Involving the Theory 3 

Snappy Stories. 
Parisienne. 
Young's Magazine. 
Saucy Stories. 
Breezy Stories. 
Telling Tales. 

Group 7 Ladies' Home Journal. 
Delineator. 
Designer. 

Good Housekeeping. 
Harper's Bazar. 
McCall's Magazine. 
Pictorial Keview. 
Woman's Home Companion. 

Group 8 Youth's Companion. 
St. Nicholas. 

Christian Endeavor World. 
'American Boy. 
Boy's Life. 
Open Koad. 

Booh Group Today's Short Stories Analyzed. 

Best Short Stories of (current year). 
This is the annual collection made by 
Mr. E. J. O'Brien. It tends, how- 
ever, to select stories of a specialized 
manner and mainly of interpretive 
spirit. 
2. Writing. — In an expository or philosophical form, 
state and explain some truth or principle of human 



£ Practicing the Short Story 

life. Then write out a narrative or descriptive incident 
in which this truth is embodied in concrete acts, conduct, 
or speech. (Make what is done and said show forth the 
abstract conception.) 

3. Writing. — (Par. 14). Write a sketch or incident 
in which you use familiar surroundings and persons as 
raw material, but work them into a product that differs 
noticeably from the originals. 

4. Writing. — (Par. 15.) Out of your own experience 
and knowledge, write an incident or sketch, or present a 
situation, that shall be the product of your own insight 
and understanding expressed in an original creation by 
your own imagination. Length from 600 to 1500 words. 

Sections II-III 

5. Examine the stories read in connection with exer- 
cise 1. Which ones are a development of loose-wrought 
plot, and which ones have a close-wrought plot? (See 
sec. III.) 

6. Continue the examination of the stories, classifying 
them according to their general structure, as sketches, 
tales, scenarios, etc. (See sec. II, par. 3.) 

7. Writing. — Work out a set of incidents for an 
original narrative of the loose-plot class. 

8. Writing. — Work out a set of incidents for an 
original narrative of the close-wrought type of plot. (If 
you can adapt to this exercise the incidents used in doing 
exercise 7, so much the better.) 

Section IV 

9. Writing. — Plan out and state a situation that de- 
pends on character (i.e., one that, when developed, will be 



Exercises Involving the Theory 5 

dramatic in the sense of par. 1, sec. IV). Do not attempt 
anything too complicated for comparatively brief develop- 
ment. 

10. Writing. — Work out the set of incidents necessary 
to present and develop this situation. (Keep par. 6 in 
mind.) 

11. Writing. — Write out the narrative that you have 
planned in exercises 9-10. 

Section V 

12. Eeview the narratives read in doing exercise 1, or 
read others that may be assigned in Today's Short Stories 
Analyzed or from magazines. Which of them present the 
situation in its most critical period only ? Which of them 
present not only the critical period, but also tend to dwell 
on antecedent matters out of which the crisis grows? 

13. Continue exercise 12. Is the critical period long 
or short in most of these stories ?' How long or short ? 

14. Consider the narrative written for exercise 11. Is 
the situation presented in its most critical period only, or 
does the narrative tend to dwell more or less on pre- 
liminary matters also, or otherwise to spread over more 
than the crisis? 

Section VI 

15. Return to the narratives read under exercise 1, or 
read others assigned by the Instructor from magazines or 
Today's Short Stories Analyzed. In a single sentence 
(when possible), state the dominant impression, or effect, 
produced. Have any of the stories a loose or general in- 
terest rather than a single, concentrated, dominant impres- 
sion ? Note how many of the loose-interest narratives are 



6 Practicing the Short Story 

narratives that develop the situation at its crisis only. 
Are the narratives that devote themselves especially to the 
crisis of the situation, loose or general in their interest, 
or do they tend to he concentrated in effect? What con- 
clusions do you draw from the examination? 

16. Writing. — List ten definite, single impressions, or 
effects, each of which might be taken satisfactorily as the 
object of a story. 

17. Writing. — Endeavor in limited space — as much 
under 100 words as possible — to create a definite, pre- 
planned impression. (Probably you will adopt the anec- 
dote form, but not necessarily so.) — Repeat the exercise, 
using a different form of presentation. 



Section VII 

18. Examine the narratives read under exercise 1, or 
others that may be assigned from the magazines or from 
Today's Short Stories Analyzed, etc. Note (a) those in 
which the effect of the story is owed to the plot, and (b) 
those in which it is owed to elements other than the plot. 

19. Continuing the examination, determine concerning 
each story whether its effect is that of (a) theme, (b) char- 
acter, (c) incident and action, or (d) atmosphere. (See 
par. 4.) 

Section VIII 

20. Writing. — Lay out a theme-story, setting down the 
preparatory summary, or specifications, of it in writing. 
(Pars. 10-11.) 

21. Writing. — Write the narrative laid out in exer- 
cise 20. 



Exercises Involving the Theory ? 

22. Writing, — As in exercise 20. Lay out a purpose 
theme-story. 

23. Writing, — As in exercise 20. Lay out a theme- 
story that presents a problem. 

24. Writing. — Develop the forecast of No. 22 into a 
completed narrative. 

25. Writing. — Do the same with No. 23. 

Section IX 

26. Examine narratives of the plot type, noting the 
parts that have to do respectively with (a) action, (b) inci- 
dent, and (c) activity. (Plot stories are frequent in 
group 3, exercise 1, with group 4 and then group 2 
probably following next in order.) 

27. Continue exercise 26. Note which narratives 
especially belong to the ingenious-complication type, and 
which to the action type. 

28. Find good instances of the mystery-story; of the 
surprise-plot. 

29. Writing. — Lay out a story of the ingenious-plot 
type, and write the preparatory summary, or forecast. 

30. Writing. — As in No. 29, but an action-plot story. 

31. Writing. — As in No. 29, but a mystery story (cf. 
par. 9). 

32. Writing. — As in No. 29 ; a surprise-plot story (un- 
less one has already been laid out in one of the exercises 
just preceding this). 



33. 
34. 
35. 
36.J 



Write the story laid out in exercise 



29. 

30. 

31. 

132. 



Practicing the Short Story 



Section X 

37. Cite stories that concern the dealings of men (a) 
with the physical world, (b) with other men, and (c) with 
moral or spiritual matters. Let some of the illustrations 
he drawn from contemporary sources. Note especially 
any story in which the physical, the social-human (men 
with men), and the spiritual are involved together. 

38. Set down a catalogue of the fundamental elements 
or traits of human nature, or character (cf. pars. 8 
and 11). 

39. Pass in review before your mind five persons whom 
you know intimately. Catalogue the individualizing traits 
and tendencies of each (par. 9). 

40. Continue your analysis of character in two or more 
of the five acquaintances. What individual traits of each 
can be traced to temperament, and what is the tempera- 
ment of the individual involved? So far as you can 
judge, how has this particular temperament been pro- 
duced in the person who has it? (See pars. 12-13.) 
To what causes do you ascribe the remaining individual 
traits ? 

41. Writing. — Conceive an imaginary character (a 
person and his or her traits). As concisely as possible, 
describe the character of this person in a direct expository 
statement or analysis. (Aim at a natural conception 
rather than at one of the exaggerated, bizarre, or sensa- 
tional sort.) 

42. Writing. — Using as a guide the character-state- 
ment just prepared, produce a character-sketch (not more 
than 1200 words). So far as possible, accomplish the 
presentation by recounting speech, acts, and conduct, 



Exercises Involving the Theory 9 

rather than by direct explanation or mere explanatory 
description. 

Section XI 

43. In Today's Short Stories Analyzed, or other recent 
collection of short fiction, or in current magazines, find 
good examples of narratives that emphasize atmosphere, 
or subjective coloring. 

44. Writing. — By means of narration, of description, 
or of the two combined, present a setting that is strong in 
atmosphere, or subjective coloring. 

Note: In Nos. 44-48, seek the atmosphere in the thing 
itself; do not arbitrarily determine it. See No. 49. 

45. Writing. — As in No. 44, but employing environ- 
ment other than setting (see par. 8). 

46. Writing. — As in No. 4:4:, but employing subjective 
details (see par. 6, with note 21, and cf. sec. X, par. 15). 

47. Writing. — Probably one or more of the exercises 
above (44-46) will possess mainly an objective atmosphere 
(see par. 6, note 21). Endeavor now so to treat its ma- 
terials as to give it the atmosphere of mood or tone (sub- 
jective atmosphere) instead of that of material fact (ob- 
jective atmosphere). 

48. Writing. — As in No. 47, but endeavoring to 
change subjective atmosphere over to objective atmosphere. 

49. Writing. — Determine in advance a mood or tone 
the impression of which you wish to give. Then present 
setting, environment, person, character, or situation in 
such a way as to create this impression. (This exercise 
may well be repeated, with variations of the impression 
planned for, of the length of the narrative, and of the 
means of creating the impression.) 



CHAPTER II 
Theory and Practice of the Plot 

Section XII 

50. Writing. — Work out and submit a plot-abstract for 
a dramatic conte. After consultation with the instructor, 
jrevise it. 

51. Writing. — In from 20 to 75 words, characterize 
each of the persons, setting forth only those traits which 
are essential to the narrative. (Par. 2, A., B.) 

52. Writing. — Make a summary of each of the inci- 
dents necessarily involved in producing the intended out- 
come. (Par. 2, C, D.) 

53. Writing. — Give a statement of the reaction or 
threatened reaction of these incidents upon the persons. 
(Par. 2, E.) 

54. Writing. — A statement showing the mutually op- 
posed conditions or influences that create the complication. 
Then briefly indicate the progress of the conflict up to and 
including the crisis ; and then on to the outcome. 

55. Writing. — State the person's motive in each sig- 
nificant act or action wherein he has part. Do this for 
all the persons. (Par. 3, A.) 

56. Writing. — State the effective cause or causes of 
each significant incident or development. (Par. 3, A.) 
This carries one further than does 'No. 55 ; the latter in- 
volves no causes other than individual motive in the 
persons. 

10 



Exercises Concerning Plot 11 

5 6 A". Writing, — For the moment, lay aside the plot on 
which you have been working, and devote yourself to 
producing a brief dramatic narrative after the general 
plan of What the Vandals Leave (but possibly a bit 
longer) or The Song, (See Today 3 s Short Stories 
Analyzed, pp. 3 and 6.) 

57. Writing. — Endeavor so to treat Anchors Aweigh 
(Today's Short Stories Analyzed, pp. 10 and 12), as to 
turn it into a dramatically plotted narrative. (Other 
episodes, sketches, tales, etc., of the non-dramatic type, 
will afford material for similar practice.) 

Section XIII 

58. Writing. — Eeturning to the plot taken in hand in 
"Nos. 50 to 55, set down a summary of the situation, cov- 
ering all important facts as they exist at the beginning of 
the action (i.e., summarize the matters belonging to the 
exposition). 

Section XIV 

59. Writing. — State what constitutes the exciting mo- 
ment in your plot (Nos. 50-55 and 58) ; the generating 
circumstances. Then present the narrative completed as 
far as the beginning of the development. (This of course 
will not be possible in case your narrative opens with 
action belonging to the development of the plot.) 

60. At this point, a review may be made of the various 
plots on which the class members have been at work, to 
test the complication and generating circumstance for 
naturalness, congruity, and plausibility. Pars. 5-14. 



12 Practicing the Short Story 



Sections XV-XVI 

61. Writing. — Continuing the development of the plot 
worked out in Nos. 50-55, 58-59, write out the first stage * 
of the rising action from the point where the narrative 
was left by exercise 59. 

62. Writing. — Produce the next stage * or stages of 
development, up to and including the decisive moment. 
(Note whether this is also the climactic height of your nar- 
rative.) 

63. Writing. — Complete the narrative, unless it reached 
completeness with and in the decisive moment. If your 
narrative includes falling action, consider whether it gains 
or loses thereby, and whether, by readjustment, the stage 
of falling action cannot be avoided with benefit to the 
artistic effect. 

64. Study the completed narrative with reference to 
the kind of interest belonging to its incidents (see sec. 
XV, pars. 19-22). 

Are the matters introduced interesting in themselves? 

If not, do they become interesting because of their im- 
portance in the action? 

Are they sensational or melodramatic ? Necessarily so ? 
Displeasingly so? Implausibly so? 

Are they conventional, hackneyed, dull? 

Are they true to human nature? to class trait? to in- 
dividual character? to experience? 

To what extent are they drawn from ordinary life, per- 
sons, and affairs? 

1 The term may here be regarded as including single incidents that 
advance the action, with such contributory matter as coheres with 
them in the natural process of narrating. 



EXEECISES CoNCEENING PLOT 13 

If there is failure of interest, is it caused by unsympa- 
thetic treatment or lack of imagination in the presenta- 
tion? by lack of command of style and expression? by 
over-detailed or under-developed presentation? 

What means can you suggest by which interest may be 
created or intensified in the narrative as a whole, or in any 
of its parts or incidents? 

65. Study the narratives with reference to the pres- 
ence in them of intensifying, or concentrative, material 
(sec. XV., pars. 30-42). 

Is this material helpful to its narrative? 

In what way? — to create mood or tone? to intensify 
environment or setting effects? to gain other atmosphere 
effects? to emphasize character or person? to emphasize 
theme? to increase the impression of activity? 

Is it well selected to accomplish its purpose? 

Is it well presented, especially with regard to its pur- 
pose? In what respects? 

Is it skilfully " integrated " with, or worked into, the 
narrative ? 

Is there too much of it ? Is any of it too much ampli- 
fied or otherwise made over-prominent? 

Does it agree with the narrative, in view of the latter's 
motif, or basic theme and purpose? Or does any of it 
seem incongruous? 

66. Writing. — Thoroughly revise, and if necessary en- 
tirely reconstruct, your narrative in accordance with the 
increased realizations of its problems and possibilities that 
you have gained. 



CHAPTEE III 

The Compositional Construction of the Story 

Sections XVII-XVIII 

67. Writing. — Work out another plot. Develop it to 
the scenario stage. 

68. Writing. — See pars. 1 and 4 ; the tables. Write 
an opening for the story outlined in No. 67; let it begin 
the action. 

69. Writing. — Write another opening for the same 
story. Let this one emphasize character. 

70. Writing. — Write yet another opening for the story. 
This time let it especially create atmosphere. 

71. Writing. — Write a fourth opening, this time 
bringing forth the theme. 

72. Study the individual effectiveness, merely in them- 
selves, of each of the four openings. 

73. Study the four openings with reference to their 
effectiveness in introducing, or starting off, the story. 
Which evidently gives this narrative the best start? 
Which seem less well adapted to introducing this par- 
ticular narrative and its body of materials? 

74. Writmg. — Write a fifth opening, in which you 
endeavor to accomplish together all the various purposes 
aimed at separately in the four previous openings. Com- 
pare its effectiveness with that of the others. 

75. Writing. — "Finally, write the opening that you feel 
is the right opening for its own sake — that is, an opening 

14 



Exercises Concerning Structure 15 

that seems to you most artistically and satisfactorily to 
accord with, what is said in sec. XVII, par. 21, and sec. 
XVIII, par. 21, regardless of the experimental forms al- 
ready prepared. In this last draft, freely follow your 
own instinct and feeling. 

Sections XIX-XXI 

76. Writing. — Complete the telling of your story from 
the point at which you left it in one of the openings con- 
structed in exercises 68-71, keeping the narrative adjusted 
to this beginning. (See E*o. 80.) 

77. Writing. — Complete the telling of your story as 
you prepared for it in exercise 75. Let this version rep- 
resent freely and thoroughly your own conception and 
method. 

78. Submit your personal version (exercise 77) for 
criticism by the class and the instructor with reference to : 

B'asic conception and motif. 

Plotting and motivation. 

Management of incident and action. 

Conception and presentation of persons and character. 

Interest and suspense. 

Integration of materials. 

Degree and effectiveness of atmosphere. 

Esthetic and artistic qualities — imagination, emotional 

appeal, style, etc. 
Ultimate impression — its strength, effectiveness, truth 

to experience and probability, spiritual value, etc. 

79. Writing. — Make all the betterment that you can 
in the story; then submit it (typewritten) to the most 



16 Practicing the Short Story 

probable market. In case of rejection, submit the MS. in 
turn to three or more other markets. 

80. Examine the version of your story prepared in 
exercise 76. Has the telling been hampered or otherwise 
affected disadvantageously by the form of opening em- 
ployed ? What means can you see for making this version 
more effective as a whole, though still adhering to its 
original plan? Could the opening be beneficially re- 
written, retaining however its original purpose? From 
what point of view, if any, might the telling of the story 
in this form be advisable? 



CHAPTER IV 
Othee Peoblems op Fiction-Wbiting 

Section XXII 

81. Writing. — Lay out a narrative in which one person 
unmistakably dominates the whole (it may be possible to 
have but this one person in the story). Tell the story. 

82. Examine the completed narrative, noting the 
presence or absence in it of the unities mentioned in 
pars. 10-15. 

83. Writing. — Lay out a narrative in which the lead- 
ing person appears in both childhood and maturity, but 
in which the central action concerns that person only as 
a grown-up. 

84. Writing. — Lay out and write a story in which an 
interval of several years falls in between important stages 
of the central action. Pay especial attention to the man- 
agement of the transition, so that the existence of this 
time-break may not interfere with the reader's sense of 
unbroken continuity and single unity in the story as a 
whole. 

85. Writing. — Lay out and write a narrative in which 
part of the essential action takes place at a remote distance 
from the scene of the rest. Especially try to give a sense 
of relation and connection existing between the separated 
locations, thus preventing, if possible, the effect of break 
and strangeness, with the consequent necessity of readjust- 
ment of the reader's imagination. (Sound motivation will 

17 



18 Peacticing the Shoet Stoey 

require that the double location be essential to the 
plot.) 

86. Writing. — Try the experiment of writing a narra- 
tive in which the single ultimate impression is produced 
merely by the fact that the incidents introduced all take 
place in the same setting (or the same setting and environ- 
ment). Study the completed narrative with a view to 
finding means of strengthening it in interconnectedness 
and otherwise increasing the sense of unity in it. 
(Par. 13.) 

87. Writing. — Try a similar experiment, aiming espe- 
cially at atmosphere effect from assembling several indi- 
vidual incidents of like impression-quality. (Par. 13.) 

88. Writing. — Try a third experiment, aiming at 
theme presentation from incidents not closely associated 
with one another otherwise than by the fact that they illus- 
trate the same idea. (Par. 13.) 

89. Study the narratives produced by the experiments 
of exercises 86-88. What degree of unity seems likely to 
result from the employment of the plan of structure, or 
kind of plot-structure, depended on in these narratives ? 

Section XXIII 

90. Writing. — State 5 plot-germs. 

91. Writing. — Selecting one of the 5, adjust and de- 
velop it into a working-plot of (A) theme ; (B) character ; 
(C) atmosphere; (D) action. 

92. Writing. — Taking one of the working-plots stated 
in accordance with exercise 91 ; set down a list of incidents 
and other materials adapted to its effective development. 
Submit the " layout " for criticism and suggestion. 

93. Writing. — Another, as in No. 92. 



Exercises in Managing Materials 19 

94. Writing. — Another, as in ~No. 92. 

95. State the outcome of each of the working-plots 
(exercise 91), and determine whether or not it promises 
enough " significance " (interest or interpretation) to 
justify jour completing the narrative. (Par. 5.) 

96. Are the conceptions and materials of the working- 
plots (exercise 91) such as the writer who proposes them 
is, by reason of familiarity with them, probably qualified 
to treat? 

97. Study the proposed working-plots (No. 91) with 
reference to their natural fitness for story purposes — i.e., 
their " dramatic availability " as that term is explained 
in par. 7. 

98. Writing. — Having revised the most promising of 
your working-plots, write the story from it. 

99. Read three or more of these stories (in Today's 
Short Stories 'Analyzed), and decide whether or not, by 
their reporting of life, they present some definite view of 
or attitude toward life; (see pars. 10-13): 

In the Matter of Distance. 

A Ragtime Lady. 

Little Sunbeam. 

The Last Rose of Summer. 

An Epilogue. 

The Defective. 

That Hahnheimer Story. 

Is this view or attitude stated explicitly, or is it merely 
implied in the situations and details reported? (The 
same test can also be made upon narratives appearing in 
the current magazines.) 



20 Practicing the Short Stoey 

Sections XXIV-XXV 

100. In Today's Short Stories Analyzed or other col- 
lections, or in current magazine narratives, find good ex- 
amples of characterization. Bring them to class for dis- 
cussion. 

101. Writing. — Narrate an anecdote, incident, or epi- 
sode that reveals miserliness in its central person. 

102. Writing. — Kepeat the exercises of No. 101, 
exemplifying such character-qualities or traits as: 



A. 


Hopefulness. 


B. 


Courage. 


C. 


Gluttony. 


D. 


Bashfulness. 


E. 


Faith. 


F. 


Generosity. 


G. 


Vengefulness. 


H. 


Flippancy. 


I. 


Cruelty. 


J. 


Deceitfulness. 


K. 


Stupidity. 


L. 


Grossness of taste. 


M. 


Imaginativeness. 


"N. 


Sympathy. 


O. 


Slovenliness. 


P. 


Fickleness of purpose. 


Q. 


Irresoluteness. 


E. 


Bullheadedness. 


S. 


Love of children. 


T. 


Luxuriousness. 



Etc., etc. 



Exercises in Managing Materials 21 

103. Writing. — Following the instructor's directions, 
develop some of these " studies " into character-sketches. 
'Aim at narrational and dramatic presentation so far as it 
is possible. 

104. Writing. — Make an observational study of per- 
sons engaged in the same occupation or otherwise belong- 
ing to a distinct, clearly distinguishable class. By means 
of sketch, incident, etc., portray a member of this class, as 
such. The following list of class-subjects is suggestive 
merely : 

The Swedish farm-laborer, the Hungarian miner or 
steel-worker, etc. 

The Polish housemaid. 

The rural or the urban school-ma'am or school-master. 

The stenographer (man; woman). 

The young army officer. 

The floor-walker, the male department-store " clerk," 
etc. 

The newly-prosperous, society-aspiring, small-town 
woman of humble past. 

The blacksmith, the plumber, the painter, etc. 

The preacher. 

The chauffeur, the taxi-driver, etc. 

The idle or coddled son or daughter of well-to-do 
parents. 

The village politician. 

The city or the small-town " bum." 

The person of aristocratic instincts (look up the mean- 
ing of " aristocrat.") 

The person of intellectual or of non-intellectual in- 
stincts. 



22 Peacticing the Shoet Stoey 

The person of imaginative mind. 

The literal-minded person ; the bigot ; the prude. 

Etc., etc. 

105. Writing. — Make an observational study of some 
particular race or nationality. By means of sketch, inci- 
dent, etc., portray a person or a group of persons of this 
race or nationality, putting emphasis on the race or na- 
tional characteristics. 

106. Writing. — Lay out and complete a narrative in 
"which one set of national or race traits is in conflict with 
another set in the same person. This might (for example) 
be the case in a person of mingled Negro and White blood, 
or in one of German family but American or English or 
French or Italian culture. 

107. Writing. — By means of sketch, incident, etc., por- 
tray two persons of widely different class, yet in whom the 
same basic traits of character assert themselves. (One 
illustration can be found in In the Matter of Distance, 
in Today's Short Stories Analyzed.) 

Sections XXVI-XXVII 

108. Make an observational study of the manner of 
speech of several persons of the same degree of education 
and similar social status. 

109. Study the differences in manner of speech be- 
tween the men and the women of this group. 

110. Writing. — Write a few short conversations rep- 
resentative of the manner of speech of these persons. If 
the conversations are made to arise out of and develop a 
situation, so much the better. 



Exercises in Managing Materials 23 

111. Study the speech of other groups and classes; as, 
that of: 



New Englanders. 

Ohio Valley residents. 

City dwellers, villagers, and country folk in the same 
region. 

Natives of particular localities, states, or sections; as, 
the Pennsylvania German districts; Kentucky, 
Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, Quebec, British Colum- 
bia, etc. 

112. As opportunity offers, study more extreme dialect 
peculiarities — the vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence- 
structure, etc., of persons of foreign national or provin- 
cial language, or of occupation, environment, or status 
productive of dialectal peculiarities; etc. For example: 

Italians, Armenians, Japanese. 

Sailors, miners, farmers; lawyers and policemen; 

youths of slum breeding; etc. 
Lowlanders of the Blue Ridge region. 
Mountaineers of the Blue Ridge region. 
Venetian Italians and Calabrian Italians. 
Educated Parisians and Parisians of the streets. 

(The causes producing peculiarities and divergences of 
speech are many. When an author is faced with the neces- 
sity of introducing dialect, he may have to make a 
special study of the speech of the class of persons he is 
presenting.) 



24 Practicing the Short Story 

113. Writing. — Continue the practice-writing of con- 
versation and dialect, as outlined in No. 110. 

114. Writing. — Carefully attend on chance conversa- 
tions within your hearing; then endeavor to reproduce 
them verbatim. 

115. Writing. — Endeavor to turn the conversations re- 
ported verbatim in ~No. 114, into a form that would be 
usuable in fiction or stage pieces. 

116. Writing. — Eeproduce conversation of some pre- 
cise, restrained, colorless talker. 

117. Writing. — Eeproduce conversation of a vivid, ani- 
mated, imaginative talker. (Setting off the two speakers 
of 116 and 117 will afford practice in contrast.) 

118. Writing. — Do a character-sketch that depends 
principally upon conversation as the means of portrayal. 

119. Writing. — Lay out and write a narrative that is 
developed largely by means of dialogue. 



SUPPLEMENTARY PRACTICE 

The exercises that follow provide practice in various 
contributory processes important in fiction-writing. 

120. Writing. — Study 10 persons. Adequately picture 
each in a compact descriptive characterization of from 
10 to 30 words. 

121. Writing. — Study 10 rooms, interiors, buildings 
(any sort), etc., and picture each forth in its leading 
aspects or impression, in from 15 to 40 (at most 50) 
words. 

122. Writing. — As in the two preceding exercises, 
endeavor in the fewest adequate words to make the reader 
realize : 

A. The characteristic movement or motion of 10 dif- 

ferent things, animate or inanimate. 

B. Ten experiences, or sensations, of sound (separate 

or in medley). 

C. Five sensations of touch or contact. 

D. Five sensations of taste. 

E. Five odors or smells. 

F. Five different psychological or nervous states or re- 

actions, depending on either physical or mental 
cause or provocation (as, that resulting from a 
sudden blow ; the experience of " coming out " 
from the influence of an anesthetic; the feeling 
that accompanies joy, grief, surprise, etc., etc.). 



26 Practicing the Short Story 

123. Writing. — Using but a sentence or two for each, 
indicate or suggest (but do not tell outright) the mood 
of 5 persons, the mood in each instance being different 
from the others. (If possible, observe actual persons 
under the influence of a mood, and base these mood-hints 
upon the behavior so noted.) 

124. Writing. — Moneyless Miss Carman has her cap 
set for the wealthy but blundering and sensitive Professor 
Nimmo. Offering her refreshments, he has just spoiled 
her one good evening gown by upsetting coffee over it. 
Reveal, in a few words, her feelings. Afterward, en- 
deavor by means of other hints to reveal the same thing 
in four other forms. 

125. Writing. — Set forth another situation such as 
would produce a mood, and by recounting behavior and 
similar signs reveal the mood so produced — but without 
naming it. Do the same twice more, but for other moods. 

126. Writing. — Continue exercise 125 as directed or 
as time permits. In some of the work, do not set forth 
the situation, but make what you write reveal not only 
the mood, but the circumstances producing it. Let some 
of this practice be based on immediate observation, and 
some of it be imaginative. 

127. Writing. — Describe a scene (as, persons at a town 
meeting or a political rally, at a religious revival, at wor- 
ship, at the theater, in the home, etc.) wherein mood or 
moods are noticeably present. (Good practice is obtained 
by observing actual gatherings and accurately reporting 
them descriptively, then changing the report into a de- 
scription that aims at artistic rather than at fact presen- 
tation.) 

128. Writing. — Do a narrative-descriptive sketch in 



Exercises in Basic Processes 27 

whicti you portray the feelings of a person undergoing for 
the first time what to him are unfamiliar experiences ; as, 
a city hoy or girl in the country, a landsman taking his 
first sail on the salt water, a timid tourist lost in the 
slums, etc., etc. 

129. Writing. — Something is taking place outside the 
reach of your direct observation; but a group of persons 
whom you can see are in turn observing that which is 
going on — the capsizing of a boat, the slaughter of 
" bourgeois " prisoners by the bolsheviki, the spanking of 
an offensive child by its mother, a rescue from a burning 
house, a burial. So describe the behavior of these persons, 
their attitude, movements, expressions, etc., that we shall 
understand what is taking place and share their feelings. 

Note. — Artistic suggestion is accomplished largely by 
the employment of details and diction that make what is 
dealt with seem vivid, real, and even actual. It involves 
visualization, or the ability to see things clearly, in the 
concrete, and as it were with imaginative background. To 
say that " The swimmer was a large, fat man who must 
have weighed more than 300 pounds," is to be merely 
matter-of-fact. But to say that " The swimmer was a 
blubberous leviathan of a man, whom any old whaling- 
captain would have estimated at a glance as capable of 
trying out whole barrels of oil " — that is to set forth a pic- 
ture that goes far beyond the matter-of-fact in imagina- 
tive stimulus and interest. (Visualization extends to 
everything that can in any way be perceived by senses or 
mind. Thus, odor is suggestively visualized if we say, 
" As the Pole's big fist flourished itself under Harold's 
nose, it struck his dainty nostrils with a smell as if the 



28 Practicing the Short Story 

man had been pulling onions since childhood and had 
never washed his hands in all that time." A state of 
mind is visualized for us by such a sentence as this : " He 
could measure his own terror in the cold contraction of 

his heart and the strained staring of his eyes.") The 

following group of exercises will afford the student oppor- 
tunity both to test and to increase his power of visualiza- 
tion and his skill in artistic suggestion. 

130. Writing. — Put before us Christmas day in a 
Jewish family ; in a New England or other native Ameri- 
can family. 

131. Writing. — Tell of foods or eating in such a way 
as to make the reader's mouth water. 

132. Writing. — Visualize to yourself some favorite 
place of childhood. Set it before the reader in language 
that will make him feel the charm it had for you. (Very 
likely you will idealize it somewhat — a legitimate thing 
in seeking artistic effect.) 

133. Writing. — Similarly, make the reader realize 
some spot or place that you dislike. 

134. Writing. — It is New Year's morning. Make the 
reader feel like it. 

135. Writing. — Begin with the words, " The slender 
tree bent with her weight." Then put before us an inci- 
dent in which a girl or woman has been treed by a dan- 
gerous animal — anything from a man to a skunk. The 
situation can be anything from the ridiculous to the 
tragic. 

136. Writing. — Visit a slaughter-house, packing-house, 
soap-factory, tannery, or the like, and describe the place 
with reference especially to its odors, individual, cumu- 
lative, and collective. 



Exercises in Basic Processes 29 

137. Writing. — Observe a sunrise and visualize it for 
the reader. Avoid the trite, conventional, and bromidic. 
(Practice in visualizing aspect's of nature can be continued 
indefinitely, observing the same things under different 
conditions, thus learning their endless variations — sun- 
sets, rains, snow-storms, winds, cyclones, dry weather, 
heat, cold, trees and woods, fields and pastures, etc., etc.) 

138. Writing. — Visualize for the reader: 

A. A dog-fight. 

B. A bull-fight (not necessarily the Spanish kind). 

C. A fight between stallions. 

D. A man-fight. 

E. A fight between women. 

F. A cock-fight. 

G. A fight between bee-martins and a hawk. 
H. The struggles of a hooked fish. 

I. The struggles of an animal taken in a trap. 
Etc., etc. 

139. Writing. — Visualize for the reader a family seen© 
in a happy home ; then one in an unhappy home. 

140. Writing. — Visualize for the reader the reversal 
of conditions in these two scenes (No. 139) through the 
sudden receipt of bad or good news. 

141. Writing. — Visualize for the reader a crowd in 
which numerous diverse types are mingled. 

142. Writing. — News of a great national defeat has 
been received. Visualize for the reader your home com- 
munity under its effect. 

143. Writing. — Visualize for the reader 10 prominent 
persons in your community. Aim less at mere fact- 
precision than at artistic realization, or " suggestive selec- 
tion and intensification of details." 



30 Practicing the Short Story 

144. Writing. — Visualize for the reader the pens of a 
large stockyards, or some other place where cattle are as- 
sembled in large numbers. 

145. Writing. — Visualize for the reader the behavior 
of a dog that has just been whipped. 

146. Writing. — Visualize a flourishing poultry-yard, 
idevoting half your space to a hen that has just laid her 
daily egg. 

147. Writing. — Visualize a cat or group of cats char- 
acteristically occupied. 

148. Writing. — Visualize a hospital or sick-room scene. 

149. Writing. — Build a narrative in which Betsy Bill- 
ings (who fits the name) and Kathleen Knowles, are set 
off against each other, contrast playing an important part 
in producing the effect of the story. 

150. Writing. — Edwin Sayres, intellectual and studi- 
ous, is the son of the " rich " family of the town. The 
family have no sympathy with learning and dislike his 
intellectual aspirations. In Joe Forbes, a blacksmith, he 
finds a congenial friend, well and on the whole soundly 
read. Sayres decides that Forbes's life is happier and his 
ideals higher than those of the Sayres family, and appren- 
tices himself to the trade. Write this out. The force of 
the story will lie in the contrast between the opposed points 
of view, ideals, living-conditions, and conduct of the 
Sayres family and the blacksmith. (If a love element be 
introduced, keep it subordinate to the main purpose of the 
narrative.) 

151. Writing. — Write a story based on the complete 
contrast between the outer life of the central person, 
and his (or her) deepest inner desires and longings. 
(Example, the " fighting terror " of the police force, 



Exercises in Basic Processes 31 

"whose greatest, though secret, ambition is, to own a little 
green-house and grow violets.) 



152. Writing. — Build a story out of this situation: 
Rural environment; people largely ignorant and credu- 
lous ; religious sect among them, preaching the last trump 
and end of the world to come within the next two years; 
sweetheart of young woman convert dies; in order not to 
be separated from him at the last day, she takes up a 
constant vigil at his grave. 

153. Writing. — In several negatives of outdoor scenes, 
a kodaker finds the same face appearing among the flowers 
or foliage. Build up a story from this beginning idea. 

154. Writing. — The husband has at last discovered 
that his young wife cannot cook well, and probably will 
never learn. He has also discovered that his attractive 
sister-in-law has a natural gift for such things. Carry 
husband and wife through the domestic crisis without sac- 
rificing probability or wrecking the marriage. 

155. Writing. — Build a story that, in character and 
class traits, customs, language, occupations, etc., is defi- 
nitely localized (as, for instance, on a North Dakota wheat 
farm or in a Short Creek lead-and-zinc-mining town). 

156. Writing. — Lay out and write a narrative in 
which a poisonous snake has an important part. Avoid 
the exaggerated and sensational. 

157. Writing. — HammelPs chickens keep getting into 
Brown's yard and injuring the garden. Build into a story 
the history of the tragedy (or comedy) that develops. 

158. Writing. — State working-plots for stories to bear 
the following titles: 



32 Practicing the Short Story 

A. Squab Pie. 

B. The Suffragette Parrot. 

C. The Patched Window-Pane. 

D. Folding Doors. 

E. Purple Asters. 
P. Sorrow Shack. 

G. McCarthy, Moving and Trucking. 

H. Subway Guard 098277. 

J. Something You Wish, Madame? 

K. I'll take the Check. 

159. Writing. — No. 158 continued: 

L. I ka' klo' (I cash clothes; i.e., pay cash for old 

clothes.) 

M. Umbrellas to Mend. 

K " Returned— No Funds." 

O. One Chinese Cash. 

P. A Time-Table on the Z.R. 

Q. Pink Glasses. 

E. One Flight Up. 

S. Next Station is Ellumville. 

T. Skimmed Milk. 

U. Mulcahey's « Old Master." 

V. Crab-Apple Jell. 

W. Middle Age — and Millie. 

X. On Approval. 

Y. A Mistress of Arts. 

Z. Mis' Pellew's Old Quilt. 

160. Writing. — As opportunity permits, develop the 
working-plots to the scenario stage (Nos. 158-159). 



Exercises in Basic Processes 33 

161. Writing. — As opportunity permits, complete the 
stories (Nos. 158-160). 

162. Writing. — Submit 20 titles of your own creation 
for consideration. 

163. Begin a note-book or other file for preserving 
plot-ideas; for preserving memoranda concerning charac- 
ter traits, appearance of persons, peculiarities of speech, 
notable settings and environment, incidents and situations 
of dramatic promise, suggestive titles, etc., ate. (This 
record should be kept up and steadily enlarged.) 



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